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TWENTY-ONE DAYS 


IN INDIA, 

OR THE 

TOUR OF SIR ALI BABA, K.C.B. 


BY 

GEORGE ABERIGH-MACKAY. 


A NEW EDITION, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. 

REVISED AND CORRECTED BY THE AUTHOR. 


LONDON: 

W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE, 
PALL MALL, S.W. 

1882. 


(All Bights Reserved,) 


t>S4f2> 

l??V 


LONDON: 

PRINTED BY \V. H. ALLEN AND CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE, S.W. 




PREFACE. 


The following papers were originally written, 
as will be gathered from the text, for Vanity 
Fair . 

Indore, 

October 1880. 







CONTENTS 


- 4 - 

PAGH 

No. I.—The Viceroy.1 

No. II. —The A.-D.-C. -in-Waiting, an Arrangement in 

Scarlet and Gold ...... 9 

No. III. —The Commander-in-Chief .... 17 

No. IV. —The Archdeacon, a Man of both Worlds . 27 

No. V. —The Secretary to Government ... 37 

No. VI —H.E. the Bengali Baboo .... 47 

No. VII. —The Baja ....... 56 

No. VIII. —The Political Agent, a Man in Buckram 69 

No. IX. —The Collector ...... 79 

No. X. —Baby in Partibus ...... 89 

No. XI. —The Red Chuprassie : or, The Corrupt 

Lictor ........ 99 

No. XII.—The Planter ; a Farmer Prince . . 107 

No. XIII.—The Eurasian; a Study in Chiaro-oscuro 117 




Vlll 


CONTENTS. 


No. XIY. —The Villager. 

No. XV. —The Old Colonel .... 
No. XVI. —The Civil Surgeon .... 
No. XVII. —The Shikarry .... 
No. XVIII. —The Grass-Widow in Nephelococcygia 


PAGE 

125 

187 

147 

157 

167 


No. XIX. —The Travelling M.P., the British Lion 
Rampant. 

No. XX. —Mem-Sahib. 

No. XXI. —Ali Baba Alone ; the Last Day 


179 

189 

201 



No. I. 

THE VICEROY. 


1 









































3 


No. 1. 

THE VICEROY. 


It is certainly a little intoxicating to spend a 
day with the Great Ornamental. You do not 
see much of him perhaps; but he is a Pre¬ 
sence to be felt, something floating loosely 
about in wide pantaloons and flying skirts, dif¬ 
fusing as he passes the fragrance of smile and 
pleasantry and cigarette. The air around him 
is laden with honeyed murmurs; gracious whis¬ 
pers play about the twitching, bewitching corners 
of his delicious mouth. He calls everything 
by “ soft names in many a mused rhyme.” 
Deficits, Public Works, and Cotton Duties are 

transmitted by the alchemy of his gaiety into 

1 * 



4 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


sunshine and songs. An office-box on his 
writing-table an office-box is to him, and it is 
something more: it holds cigarettes. No one 
knows what sweet thoughts are his as Chloe 
flutters through the room, blushful and startled, 
or as a fresh beaker full of the warm South 
glows between his amorous eye and the sun. 

“ I have never known 
Praise of love or wine 

That panted forth a flood of sweetness so divine.” 

I never tire of looking at a Viceroy. He is a 
being so heterogeneous from us ! He is the 
centre of a world with which he has no affinity. 
He is a veiled prophet. He who is the axis of 
India, the centre round which the Empire ro¬ 
tates, is necessarily screened from all knowledge 
of India. He lisps no syllable of any Indian 
tongue; no race or caste, or mode of Indian 
life is known to him; all our delightful pro¬ 
vinces of the sun that lie off the railway are 
to him an undiscovered country; Ghebers, Mos¬ 
lems, Hindoos blend together in one dark indis¬ 
tinguishable mass before his eye. 

A Nawab, whom the Foreign Office once 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


5 


farmed out to me, often used to ask what the 
use of a Viceroy was. I do not believe that he 
meant to be profane. The question would again 
and again recur to his mind, and find itself on 
his lips. I always replied with the counter ques¬ 
tion, “ What is the use of India ? ” He never 
would see—the Oriental mind does not see these 
things—that the chief end and object of India 
was the Viceroy; that, in fact, India was the 
plant and the Viceroy the flower. 

I have often thought of writing a hymn on 
the Beauty of Viceroys; and have repeatedly 
attuned my mind to the subject; but my in¬ 
ability to express myself in figurative language, 
and my total ignorance of everything pertaining 
to metre, rhythm, and rhyme, make me rather 
hesitate to employ verse. Certainly, the subject 
is inviting, and I am surprised that no singer 
has arisen. How can anyone view the Viceroyal 
halo of scarlet domestics, with all the bravery 
of coronets, supporters, and shields in golden 
embroidery and lace, without emotion ! How can 
the tons of gold and silver plate that once be¬ 
longed to John Company, Bahadur, and that 


6 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


now repose on the groaning board of the Great 
Ornamental, amid a glory of Himalayan flowers, 
or blossoms from Eden’s fields of asphodel, be 
reflected upon the eye’s retina without producing 
positive thrills and vibrations of joy (that cannot 
be measured in terms of ohm or farad) shooting 
up and down the spinal cord and into the most 
hidden seats of pleasure! I certainly can never 
see the luxurious bloom of the silver sticks 
arranged in careless groups about the vast por¬ 
tals without a feeling approaching to awe and 
worship, and a tendency to fling small coin 
about with a fine mediaeval profusion. I cer¬ 
tainly can never drain those profound golden 
cauldrons seething with champagne without a 
tendency to break into loud expressions of the 
inward music and conviviality that simmer in my 
soul. Salutes of cannon, galloping escorts, pro¬ 
cessions of landaus, beautiful teams of English 
horses, trains of private saloon carriages (cooled 
with water trickling over sweet jungle grasses) 
streaming through the sunny land, expectant 
crowds of beauty with hungry eyes making a 
delirious welcome at every stage, the whole 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


7 


country blooming into dance and banquet and 
fresh girls at every step taken—these form the 
fair guerdon that stirs my breast at certain 
moments and makes me often resolve, after 
dinner, “ to scorn delights and live laborious 
days,” and sell my beautiful soul, illuminated with 
art and poetry, to the devil of Industry, with 
reversion to the supreme secretariat. 

How mysterious and delicious are the cool 
penetralia of the Viceregal Office! It is the 
sensorium of the Empire ; it is the seat of 
thought; it is the abode of moral responsibility! 
What battles, what famines, what excursions, of 
pleasure, what banquets and pageants, what con¬ 
cepts of change have sprung into life here! 
Every pigeon-hole contains a potential revolu¬ 
tion; every office-box cradles the embryo of a 
war or dearth. What shocks and vibrations, 
what deadly thrills does this little thunder-cloud 
office transmit to far-away provinces lying beyond 
rising and setting suns. Ah ! Vanity, these are 
pleasant lodgings for five years, let who may 
turn the kaleidoscope after us. 

A little errant knight of the press who has 


8 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


just arrived on the Delectable Mountains, conies 
rushing in, looks over my shoulder, and says, 
“ A deuced expensive thing a Viceroy.” This 
little errant knight would take the thunder at a 
quarter of the price, and keep the Empire para¬ 
lytic with change and fear of change as if the 
great Thirty-thousand-pounder himself were on 
Olympus. 



No. II. 

THE A.D.C.-IN-WAITING, 


AN ARRANGEMENT IN SCARLET AND GOLD 





















11 


No. II. 

THE A.D.C.-IN-WAITING, 

AN ARRANGEMENT IN SCARLET AND GOLD. 


The tone of the A.D.C. is subdued. He stands 
in doorways and strokes his moustache. He 
nods sadly to you as you pass. He is pre¬ 
occupied with—himself. He has a motherly 
whisper for Secretaries and Members of Council. 
His way with ladies is sisterly—undemonstra¬ 
tively affectionate. He tows up Bajas to H.E., 
and stands in the offing. His attitude towards 
rajas is one of melancholy reserve. He will 
perform the prescribed observances, if he cannot 
approve of them. Indeed, generally, he dis¬ 
approves of the Indian people, though he con- 



12 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


dones their existence. For a brother in 
aiguillettes there is a Masonic smile and a 
half-embarrassed familiarity, as if found out in 
acting his part. But confidence is soon restored 
with melancholy glances around, and profane 
persons who may be standing about move 
uneasily away. 

An A.D.C. should have no tastes. He is 
merged in “ the house.” He must dance and 
ride admirably; he ought to shoot; he may sing 
and paint in water-colours, or botanise a little, 
and the faintest aroma of the most volatile lite¬ 
rature will do him no harm; but he cannot be 
allowed preferences. If he has a weakness for 
very pronounced collars and shirt-cuffs in mufti, 
it may be connived at, provided he be honestly 
nothing else but the man in collars and cuffs. 

When a loud, joyful, and steeplechasing Lord, 
in the pursuit of pleasure and distant wars, 
dons the golden cords for a season, the world 
understands that this is masquerading, skittles, 
and a joke. One must not confound the ideal 
A.D.C. with such a figure. 

The A.D.C. has four distinct aspects or phases 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


13 


—(1) the full summer sunshine and bloom of 
scarlet and gold for Queers birthdays and high 
ceremonials; (2) the dark frock coat and belts 
in which to canter behind his Lord; (3) the 
evening tail-coat, turned down with light blue 
and adorned with the Imperial arms on gold 
buttons; (4) and, finally, the quiet disguises of 
private life. 

It is in the sunshine glare of scarlet and 
gold that the A.D.C. is most awful and un¬ 
approachable ; it is in this aspect that the 
splendour of vice-imperialism seems to beat upon 
him most fiercely. The Rajas of Rajputana, the 
diamonds of Golconda, the gold of the Wynaad, 
the opium of Malwa, the cotton of the Berars, 
and the Stars of India seem to be typified in the 
richness of his attire and the conscious supe¬ 
riority of his demeanour. Is he not one of the 
four satellites of that Jupiter who swims in the 
highest azure fields of the eastern heavens ? 

Frock-coated and belted, he passes into 
church or elsewhere behind his Lord, like an 
aerolite from some distant universe, trailing 
cloudy visions of that young lady’s Paradise of 


14 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


bright lights and music, champagne, mayon¬ 
naise, and “ just-one-more-turn,” which is 
situated behind the flagstaff on the hill. 

The tail-coat, with gold buttons, velvet cuffs, 
and light-blue silk lining, is quite a demi-official, 
small-and-early arrangement. It is compatible 
with a patronising and somewhat superb flirta¬ 
tion in the verandah: nay, even under the 
pine-trees beyond the Gurkha sentinel, whence 
many-twinkling Jakko may be admired; it is 
compatible with a certain shadow of human sym¬ 
pathy and weakness. An A.D.C. in tail-coat 
and gold buttons is no longer a star; he is 
only a fire-balloon; though he may twinkle in 
heaven, he can descend to earth. But in the 
quiet disguises of private life he is the mere 
stick of a rocket. He is quite of the earth. 
This scheme of clothing is compatible with the 
tenderest offices of gaming or love—offices of 
which there shall be no recollection on the re¬ 
assumption of uniform and on re-apotheosis. 
An A.D.C. in plain clothes has been known 
to lay the long odds at whist, and to qualify, 
very nearly, for a co-respondentship. 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


16 


In addition to furnishing rooms in his own 
person, an A.D.C. is sometimes required to copy 
my Lord’s letters on mail-day, and, in due sub¬ 
ordination to the Military Secretary, to superin¬ 
tend the stables, kitchen, or Invitation Department. 

After performing these high functions, it is hard 
if an A.D.C. should ever have to revert to the 
buffooneries of the parade - ground, or to the 
vulgar intimacies of a mess. It is hard that 
one who has for five years been identified with 
the Empire should ever again come to be re¬ 
garded as “ Jones of the 10th,” and spoken of 
as “Punch” or “Bobby” by old boon com¬ 
panions. How can a man who has been behind 
the curtain, and who has seen la premiere dan- 
seuse of the Empire practising her steps before 
the manager Strachey, in familiar chaff and talk 
with the Council ballet, while the little scene- 
painter and Press Commissioner stood aside with 
cocked ears, and the privileged violoncellist made 
his careless jests—how, I say, can one who has 
thus been above * the clouds on Olympus ever 
associate with the gaping, chattering, irresponsible 
herd below ? 


16 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


It is well that our Ganymede should pass 
away from heaven into temporary eclipse; it is 
well that before being exposed to the rude gaze 
of the world he should moult his rainbow 
plumage in the Cimmeria of the Rajas. Here 
we shall see him again, a blinking ignis fatuus 
in a dark land—“ so shines a good deed in a 
naughty world,” thinks the Foreign Office. 






No. III. 

THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. 


2 

































































































I 












































•* 






















































h Can aTV Arnty ’lcuZer rrvaJce cv CarruriCLnjZ&r isi- C/zist,f ■ 























































































































































































































19 


No. III. 

THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. 

At Simla and Calcutta the Government of India 
always sleeps with a revolver under its pillow 
—that revolver is the Commander-in-Chief. 
There is a tacit understanding that this revolver 
is not to be let off; indeed, sometimes it is 
believed that this revolver is not loaded. 

The Commander-in-Chief is himself an army. 
His transport, medical attendance, and provi¬ 
sioning are cared for departmentally, and 
watched over by responsible officers. He is a 
host in himself; and a corps of observation. 

All the world observes him. His slightest 
movement creates a molecular disturbance in 
type, and vibrates into newspaper paragraphs. 

2 * 



20 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


When Commanders-in-Chief are born the world 
is unconscious of any change. No one knows 
when a Commander-in-Chief is born. No joyful 
father, no pale mother has ever experienced 
such an event as the birth of a Commander-in- 
Chief in the family. No Mrs. Gamp has ever 
leant over the banister and declared to the ex¬ 
pectant father below that it was “ a fine healthy 
Commander-in-Chief.” Therefore, a Commander- 
in-Chief is not like a poet. But when a Com¬ 
mander-in-Chief dies, the spirit of a thousand 
Beethovens sobs and wails in the air; dull cannon 
roar slowly out their heavy grief; silly rifles 
gibber and chatter demoniacally over his grave ; 
and a cocked hat, emptier than ever, rides with 
the mockery of despair on his coffin. 

On Sunday evening, after tea and catechism, 
the Supreme Council generally meet for riddles 
and forfeits in the snug little cloak-room parlour 
at Peterhoff. “ Can an army tailor make a 
Commander-in-Chief ? ” was once asked. Eight 
old heads were scratched and searched, but no 
answer was found. No sound was heard save 
the seething whisper of champagne ebbing and 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


21 


flowing in the eight old heads. Outside, the 
wind moaned through the rhododendron trees; 
within, the Commander-in-Chief wept peacefully. 
He felt the awkwardness of the situation. An 
aide-de-camp stood at the door hiccupping idly. 
He was known to have invested all his paper 
currency in Sackville Street; and he felt in 
honour bound to say that the riddle was a little 
hard on the army tailors. So the subject dropped. 

A Commander-in-Chief is one of the most 
beautiful articles of social upholstery in India. 
He sits in a large chair in the drawing-room. 
Heads and bodies sway vertically in passing him. 
He takes the oldest woman in to dinner; he 
gratifies her with his drowsy cackle. He says 
“ Yes ” and “No” to everyone with drowsy 
civility; everyone is conciliated. His stars dimly 
twinkle—twinkle; the host and hostess enjoy 
their light. After dinner he decants claret into 
his venerable person, and tells an old story; the 
company smile with innocent joy. He rejoins 
the ladies and leers kindly on a pretty woman; 
she forgives herself a month of indiscretions. 
He touches Lieutenant the Hon. Jupiter Smith 


22 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


on the elbow and inquires after his mother; a 
noble family is gladdened. He is thus a source 
of harmless happiness to himself and to those 
around him. 

If a round of ball cartridge has been wasted 
by a suicide, or a pair of ammunition boots 
carried off by a deserter, the Commander-in- 
Chief sometimes visits a great cantonment under 
a salute of seventeen guns. The military then 
express their joy in their peculiar fashion, accord¬ 
ing to their station in life. The cavalry soldier 
takes out his charger and gallops heedlessly up 
and down all the roads in the station. The 
sergeants of all arms fume about as if trans¬ 
acting some important business between the 
barracks and their officers’ quarters. Subalterns 
hang about the Mess, whacking their legs with 
small pieces of cane and drinking pegs with 
mournful earnestness. The Colonel sends for 
everyone who has not the privilege of sending 
for him; and says nothing to each one, sternly 
and decisively. The Majors, and the officers 
doing general duty, go to the Club and swear 
before the civilians that they are worked off their 


ONE BAY IN INDIA. 


23 


legs, complaining fiercely to themselves that the 
Service is going, &c. &c. The Deputy-Assistant- 
Quartermaster-General puts on all the gold lace 
he is allowed to wear, and gallops to the Assis¬ 
tant-Adjutant-General,—where he has tiffin. The 
Major-General-Commanding writes notes to each 
of his friends, and keeps orderlies flying at 
random in every direction. 

The Commander-in-Chief—who had a disturbed 
night in the train—sleeps peacefully throughout 
the day, and leaves under another salute in the 
afternoon. He shakes hands with everyone he 
can see at the station, and jumps into a long 
saloon carriage, followed by his staff. 

“ A deuced active old fellow! ” everyone says; 
and they go home and dine solemnly with one 
another under circumstances of extraordinary im¬ 
portance. 

The effect of the Commander-in-Chief is very 
remarkable on the poor Indian, whose untutored 
mind sees a Lord in everything. He calls the 
Commander-in-Chief “ the Jungy Lord,” or War- 
Lord, in contradistinction to the “ Mulky-Lord,” 
or Country-Lord, the appellation of the Viceroy. 


24 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


To the poor Indian this War-Lord is an object 
of profound interest and speculation. He has 
many aspects that resemble the other and more 
intelligible Lord. An aide-de-camp rides behind 
him; hats, or hands, rise electrically as he passes; 
yet it is felt in secret that he is not pregnant 
with such thunder-clouds of rupees, and that he 
cannot make or mar a Eaja. To the Baja it is 
an ever-recurring question whether it is neces¬ 
sary or expedient to salaam to the Jungy Lord 
and call upon him. He is hedged about with 
servants who will require to be richly propitiated 
before any dusky countryman gets access to this 
Lord of theirs. Is it, then, worth while to pass 
through this fire to the possible Moloch who 
sits beyond ? Will this process of parting with 
coin—this Valley of the Shadow of Death—lead 
them to any palpable advantage ? Perhaps the 
War-Lord with his red right hand can add guns 
to their salute; perhaps he will speak a recom¬ 
mendatory word to his caste-fellow, the Country 
Lord ? These are precious possibilities. 

A Eaja whom I am now prospecting for the 
Foreign Office asked me the other day where 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


26 


Commanders-in-Chief were ripened, seeing that 
they were always so mellow and blooming. I 
mentioned a few nursery gardens I knew of in 
and about Whitehall and Pall Mall. H.H. at 
once said that he should like to plant his son 
there, if I would water him with introductions. 
This is young ’Arry Bobbery, already favourably 
known on the Indian Turf as an enterprising 
and successful defaulter. 

You will know 'Arry Bobbery if you meet him, 
dear Vanity, by the peculiarly gracious way in 
which he forgives and forgets should you commit 
the indiscretion of lending him money. You 
may be sure that he will never allude to the 
matter again, but will rather wear a piquant do- 
it-again manner, like our irresistible little friend 

Conny B-. I don’t believe, however, that 

Bobbery will ever become a Commander-in-Chief, 
though his distant cousin, Scindia, is a General, 
and though they talk of pawning the 'long-shore 
Governorship of Bombay to Sir Cursingjee Dam- 
theboy. 








No. IV. 

THE ARCHDEACON, 


A MAN OF BOTH WORLDS. 







29 


No. IV. 

THE ARCHDEACON, 

A MAN OF BOTH WORLDS. 


The Press Commissioner has been trying by a 
strained exercise of his prerogative to make me 
spend this day with the Bishop, and not with 
the Archdeacon; but I disregard the Press Com¬ 
missioner ; I make light of him; I treat his 
authority as a joke. What authority has a pump ? 
Is a pump an analyst and a coroner ? 

Why should I spend a day with the Bishop ? 
What claim has the Bishop on my improving 
conversation ? I am not his sponsor. Besides, 
he might do me harm—I am not quite sure of 



so 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


his claret. I admit his superior ecclesiastical 
birth; I recollect his connection with St. Peter; 
and I am conscious of the more potent spells 
and effluences of his shovel-hat and apron; but 
I find the atmosphere of his heights cold, and 
the rarefied air he breathes does not feed my 
lungs. Up yonder, above the clouds of human 
weakness, my vertebrae become unhinged, my 
bones inarticulate, and I collapse. I meet mis¬ 
sionaries, and I hear the music of the spheres; 
and I long to descend again to the circles of the 
every-day inferno where my friends are. 

“ These distant stars I can forego; 

This kind, warm earth is all I know.” 

I am sorry for it. I really have upward ten¬ 
dencies ; but I have never been able to fix upon 
a balloon. The High Church balloon always 
seems to me too light; and the Low Church 
balloon too heavy; while no experienced aero¬ 
naut can tell me where the Broad Church bal¬ 
loon is bound for ; thus, though a feather-weight 
sinner, here I am upon the firm earth. So come 
along, my dear Archdeacon, let us have a stroll 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


31 


down the Mall, and a chat about Temporalities, 
Fabrics, “ Mean Whites,” and little Mrs. Lolli¬ 
pop, “ the joy of wild asses.” 

An Archdeacon is one of the busiest men in 
India—especially when he is up on the hill among 
the sweet pine-trees. He is the recognised guar¬ 
dian of public morality; and the hill captains 
and the semi-detached wives lead him a rare 
life. There is no junketing at Goldstein’s, no 
picnic at the waterfalls, no games at Amman- 
dale, no rehearsals at Herr Felix von Batten’s, 
no choir practice at the church even, from which 
he can safely absent himself. A word, a kiss, 
some matrimonial charm dispelled—these electric 
disturbances of society must be averted. The 
Archdeacon is the lightning conductor; where he 
is, the levin of naughtiness passes to the ground, 
and society is not shocked. 

In the Bishop and the ordinary padre we have 
far-away people of another world. They know 
little of us ; we know nothing of them. We feel 
much constraint in their presence. The presence 
of the ecclesiastical sex imposes severe restric¬ 
tions upon our conversation. The Lieutenant- 


82 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


Governor of the South-Eastern Provinces once 
complained to me that the presence of a clergy¬ 
man rendered nine-tenths of his vocabulary con¬ 
traband, and choked up his fountains of anecdote. 
But with an Archdeacon all this is changed. 
He is both of Heaven and Earth. When we see 
him in the pulpit we are pleased to think that 
we are with the angels ; when we meet him in 
a ball-room we are flattered to feel that the 
angels are with us. When he is with us—though, 
of course, he is not of us—he is yet exceed¬ 
ingly like us. He may seem a little more ven¬ 
erable than he is ; perhaps there may be about 
him a grandfatherly air that his years do not 
warrant; he may exact a “Sir” from us that 
is not given to others of his worldly standing; 
but there is nevertheless that in his bright and 
kindly eye—there is that in his side-long glance 
—which by a charm of Nature transmutes homage 
into familiar friendship, and respect into affection. 

The character of Archdeacons, as clergymen, 
I would not venture to touch upon. It is pro¬ 
verbial that Arcbidiaconal functions are Eleusinian 
in their mysteriousness. No one, except an 







































































































ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


83 


Archdeacon, pretends to know what the duties 
of an Archdeacon are ; so no one can say 
whether these duties are performed perfunctorily 
and inadequately, or scrupulously and success¬ 
fully. We know that Archdeacons sometimes 
preach, and that is about all we know. I 
know an Archdeacon in India who can preach 
a good sermon—I have hoard him preach it 
many a time, once on a benefit night for the 
Additional Clergy Society. It wrung four annas 
from me—but it was a terrible wrench. I 
would not go through it again to have every 
living graduate of St. Bees and Durham dis¬ 
gorged on our coral strand. 

From my saying this do not suppose that 
I am Mr. Whitley Stokes, or Babu Keshab 
Chandra Sen. I am a Churchman, beneath 
the surface, though a pellicle of inquiry may 
have supervened. I am not with the party of 
the Bishop, nor yet am I with Sir. J. S., or 
Sir A. C. I abide in the Limbo of Vanity, as 
a temporary arrangement, to study the seamy 
side of Indian politics and morality, to examine 

misbegotten wars and reforms with the scalpel, 

3 


84 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


Stars of India, with the spectroscope, and to 
enjoy the society of half-a-dozen amusing people 
to whom the Empire of India is but as a 
wheel of fortune. 

I like the recognised relations between the 
Archdeacon and women. They are more than 
avuncular and less than cousinly ; they are 
tender without being romantic, and confiding 
without being burdensome. He has the private 
entree at chhoti hazri , or early breakfast; he 
sees loose and flowing robes that are only for 
esoteric disciples ; he has the private entree 
at five o’clock tea, and hears plans for the 
evening campaign openly discussed. He is 
quite behind the scenes. He hears the earliest 
whispers of engagements and flirtations. He 
can give a stone to the Press Commissioner in 
the gossip handicap, and win in a canter. You 
cannot tell him anything he does not know 
already. 

Whenever the Government of India has a 
merrymaking, he is out on the trail. At Delhi 
he was in the thick of the mummery, beaming 
on barbaric princes and paynim princesses, 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


35 


blessing banners, blessing trumpeters, blessing 
proclamations, blessing champagne and truffles, 
blessing pretty girls, and blessing the conjunc¬ 
tion of planets that had placed his lines in such 
pleasant places. His tight little cob his 
perfect riding-kit, his flowing beard, and his 
pleasant smile were the admiration of all the 
Begums and Nabobs that had come to the fair. 
The Government of India took such delight 
in him that they gave him a gold medal and 
a book. 

With the inferior clergy the Archdeacon is 
not at his ease. He cannot respect the little 
ginger-bread gods of doctrine they make for 
themselves ; he cannot worship at their hill 
altars ; their hocus-pocus and their crystallised 
phraseology fall dissonantly on his ear ; their 
talk of chasubles and stoles, eastern attitude 
and all the rest of it, is to him as a tale told 
by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying 
nothing. He would like to see the clergy 
merely scholars and men of sense set apart for 
the conduct of divine worship and the encour¬ 
agement of all good and kindly offices to their 

3 * 


36 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


neighbours ; he does not wish to see them 
mediums and conjurers. He thinks that in a 
heathen country their paltry fetishism and 
incomprehensible technicalities are peculiarly 
offensive and injurious to the interests of 
civilisation and Christianity. Of course the 
Archdeacon may be very much mistaken in all 
this ; and it is this generous consciousness of 
fallibility which gives the singular charm to his 
religious attitude. He can take off his eccle¬ 
siastical spectacles and perceive that he may be 
in the wrong like other men. 

Let us take a last look at the Archdeacon, 
for in the whole range of prominent Anglo- 
Indian characters our eye will not rest upon 
a more orbicular and satisfactory figure. 

“ A good Archdeacon, nobly planned 
To warn, to comfort, and command; 

And yet a spirit gay and bright, 

With something of the candle -light.” 



No. V. 

THE SECRETARY TO 
GOVERNMENT. 








39 


No. Y. 

THE SECRETARY TO GOVERN¬ 
MENT. 


He is clever, I am told; and being clever he 
has to be rather morose in manner and care¬ 
less in dress, or people might forget that he 
was clever. He has always been clever. He 
was the clever man of his year. He was so 
clever when he first came out that he could 
never learn to ride, or speak the Indian lan¬ 
guage, and had to be translated to the Provincial 
Secretariat. But though he could never speak 
an intelligible sentence in the vernacular, he 
has such a practical and useful knowledge of it, 
in half-a-dozen of its dialects, that he could 




40 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


pass examinations in it with the highest credit, 
netting immense rewards. He thus became 
not only more and more clever, but more and 
more solvent; until he was an object of wonder 
to his contemporaries, of admiration to the 
Lieutenant-Governor, and of desire to several 
Barri Mem Sahibs with daughters. It was about 
this time that he is supposed to have written 
an article published in some English periodical. 
It was said to be an article of a solemn 
description ; and report magnified the periodical 
into the Quarterly Review . So he became one 
who wrote for the English Press. It was felt 
that he was a man of letters ; it was assumed 
that he was on terms of familiar correspon¬ 
dence with all the chief literary men of the 
day. With so conspicuous a reputation, he 
believed it necessary to do something in 
religion. So he gave up religion, and allowed 
it to be understood that he was a man of 
ad anced views ; a Positivist, a Buddhist, or 
something equally occult. Thus he became 
ripe for the highest employment, and was 
placed successively on a number of Special 

























































































































































































































ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


41 


Commissions. He inquired into everything ; 
he wrote hundredweights of reports ; he proved 
himself to have the true paralytic ink flux, 
precisely the kind of wordy discharge, or brain 
haemorrhage, required of a high official in 
India. He would write ten pages where a clod¬ 
hopping collector would write a sentence. He 
could say the same thing over and over again 
in a hundred different ways. The feeble forms 
of official satire were at his command. He 
desired exceedingly to be thought supercilious, 
and he thus became almost necessary to the 
Government of India, was canonised, and 
caught up to Simla. The Indian papers 
chanted little anthems, “ the Services ” said 
“Amen,” and the apotheosis was felt to be a 
success. On reaching Simla he was found to 
be familiar with the two local “jokes,” planted 
many years ago by some jackass. One of 
these “jokes” is about everything in India 
having its peculiar smell, except a flower; the 
second is some inanity about the Indian Go¬ 
vernment being a despotism of despatch-boxes 
tempered by the loss of the keys. He often 


42 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


emitted these mournful “ jokes ” until he 
was declared to be an acquisition to Simla 
society. 

Such is the man I am with to-day. His 
house is beautifully situated, overlooking a 
deep ravine, full of noble pine-trees ; and it is 
surrounded by rhododendrons. The verandah 
is gay with geraniums and tall servants in 
Imperial red deeply encrusted with gold. 
Within, all is very respectable and nice, only 
the man is—not exactly vile, but certainly 
imperfect in a somewhat conspicuous degree. 
With the more attractive forms of sin he 
has no true sympathy. I can strike no con¬ 
cord with him on this umbrageous side of 
nature. I am seriously shocked to discover 
this, for he affects infirmity; but his humanity 
is weak. In his character I perceive the 
perfect animal outline, but the colour is 
wanting ; the glorious sunshine, the profound 
glooms of humanity are not there. 

Such a man is dangerous; he decoys you 
into confidences. Even Satan cannot respect 
a sinner of this complexion,—a sinner who is 




ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


43 


only fascinated by the sinfulness of sin. As 
for my poor host, I can see that he has never 
really graduated in sin at all; he has only 
sought the degree of sinner honoris causa . I 
am sure that he never had enough true vitality 
or enterprise to sin as a man ought to sin, if 
he does sin. When I speak of sin I will be 

understood to mean the venial offences of 
prevarication and sleeping in church. I am 
not thinking of sheep-stealing or highway 
robbery. 

My clever friend’s work consists chiefly in 

reducing files of correspondence on a particular 
subject to one or two leading thoughts. Upon 
these he casts the colour of his own opinions, 
and submits the subjective product to the Secre¬ 
tary, or Member of Council, above him for final 
orders. His mind is one of the many refractive 
mediums through which Government looks out 
upon India. 

From time to time he is called upon to 

write a minute, or a note, on some given sub¬ 
ject, and then it is that his thoughts and words 
expand freely. He feels bound to cover an 


44 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


area of paper proportionate to his own opinion 
of his own importance ; he feels bound to intro¬ 
duce a certain seasoning of foreign words and 
phrases; and he feels bound to create, if the 
occasion seems in any degree to warrant it, one 
of those cock-eyed, limping, stammering epi¬ 
grams which belong exclusively to the official 
humour of Simla. I have said that the Secre¬ 
tary is clever, scornful, jocose, imperfectly sinful, 
and nimble with his pen. I shall only add that 
he has succeeded in catching the tone of the 
Imperial Bumbledom. 

This tone is an affectation of aesthetic and 
literary sympathies, combined with a cynical 
disdain of everything Indian and Anglo-Indian. 
The flotsam and jetsam of advanced European 
thought are eagerly sought and treasured up. 
“ The New Republic ” is on every drawing¬ 
room table. One must speak of nothing but 
the latest doings at the Gaiety, the pictures 
of the last Academy, the ripest outcome of 
scepticism in the Nineteenth Century , or the 
aftermath in the Fortnightly. If I were to talk to 
our Secretariat man about the harvest prospects 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


45 


of the Deckan, the beauty of the Himalayan 
scenery, or the book I have just published 
in Calcutta about the Rent Law, he would 
stare at me with feigned surprise and horror. 

“ When he thinks of his own native land, 

In a moment he seems to be there ; 

But, alas ! Ali Baba at hand 

Soon hurries him back to despair.” 







No. VI. 


H.E. THE BENGALI BABOO. 





49 


No. VI. 

H.E. THE BENGALI BABOO. 


The ascidian that got itself evolved into Bengali 
Baboos must have seized the first moment 
of consciousness and thought to regret the step 
it had taken; for however much we may desire 
to diffuse Babooism over the Empire, we must 
all agree that the Baboo itself is a subject for 
tears. 

The other day, as I was strolling down the 
Mall, whistling Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, I 
met the Bengali Baboo. It was returning 
from office. I asked it if it had a soul. It 

4 



50 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


replied that it had not; but that some day 
it hoped to pass the matriculation examination 
of the Calcutta University. I whistled the 
opening bars of one of Cherubini’s Requiems, 
but I saw no resurrection in its eye ; so I 
passed on. 

When I was at Lhassa the Dalai Lama 
told me that a virtuous cow-liippopotamus by 
metempsychosis might, under unfavourable circum¬ 
stances, become an undergraduate of the Calcutta 
University, and that, when patent-leather shoes 
and English supervened, the thing was a 
Baboo. 

I forget whether it was the Duke of Bucking¬ 
ham, or Mr. Lethbridge, or General Scindia—I 
always mix up these C.I.E.’s together in my 
mind somehow—who told me that a Bengali 
Baboo had never been known to laugh, but 
only to giggle with clicking noises like a croco¬ 
dile. Now this is very telling evidence; because 
if a Baboo does not laugh at a C.I.E. he 
will laugh at nothing. The faculty must be 
wanting. 

When Lord Macaulay said that what the milk 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


51 


was to the cocoa-nut, what beauty was to the 
buffalo, and what scandal was to woman, that 
Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary was to the Bengali 
Baboo, he unquestionably spoke in terms of 
figurative exaggeration; nevertheless a core of 
truth lies hidden in his remark. It is by the 
Baboo’s words you know the Baboo. The true 
Baboo is full of words and phrases—full of 
inappropriate words and phrases lying about like 
dead men on a battle-field, in heaps, to be 
carted away promiscuously, without reference to 
kith or kin. You may turn on a Baboo at 
any moment and be quite sure that words, and 
phrases, and maxims, and proverbs will come 
gurgling forth, without reference to the subject 
or to the occasion, to what has gone before, 
or to what will come after. Perhaps it was 
with reference to this independence, buoyancy, 
and extravagance of language that Lord Lytton 
declared the Bengali to be “the Irishman of 
India.” 

You know, dear Vanity, I whispered to you 
before that the poor Baboo often suffers from 

a slight aberration of speech which prevents 

4 * 


52 


ONE DAi T IN INDIA. 


his articulating the truth — a kind of moral 
lisp. Lord Lytton could not have been alluding 
to this ; for it was only yesterday that I heard 
an Irishman speak the truth to Lord Lytton 
about some little matter—I forget what; cotton 
duty, I think—and Lord Lytton said, rather 
curtly, “ Why, you have often told me this 
before.” So Lord Lytton must be in the 
habit of hearing certain truths from the Irish. 

It was either Sir Andrew Clarke, Sir Alex¬ 
ander Arbuthnot, or Sir Some-one-else, who 
understands all about these things, that first 
told me of the tendency to Baboo worship 
in England at present. I immediately took 
steps, when I heard of it, to capitalise my 
pension and purchase gold mines in the 
Wynaad and shares in the Simla Bank. 
(Colonel Peterson, of the Simla Fencibles, sup¬ 
ported me gallantly in this latter resolution.) 
The notion of so dreadful a form of fetishism 
establishing itself in one’s native land is repug¬ 
nant to the feelings even of those who have 
been rendered callous to such things by seats 
in the Bengal Legislative Council. 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


53 


Sir George Campbell took an interest in 
the development of the Baboo, and the selec¬ 
tion of the fittest for Government employment. 
He taught them in debating-clubs the various 
modes of conducting irresponsible parliamentary 
chatter ; and he tried to encourage pedes- 
trianism and football to evolve their legs and 
bring them into something like harmony with 
their long pendant arms. You can still see a 
few of Sir George’s leggy Baboos coiled up in 
corners of lecture-rooms at Calcutta. The Cal¬ 
cutta Cricket Club employs one as permanent 
“ leg.’’ 

It is the future of Baboodom I tremble for. 
When they wax fat with new religions, music, 
painting, Comedie Anglaise, scientific discoveries, 
they may kick with those developed legs of 
theirs, until we shall have to think that they 
are something more than a joke, more than 
a mere lusus naturce , more than a caricature 
moulded by the accretive and differentiating 
impulses of the monad in a moment of wanton 
playfulness. The fear is that their tendencies 
may infect others. The patent-leather shoes, 


54 


ONE DAY IN INDIA, 


the silk umbrellas, the ten-thousand horse¬ 
power English words and phrases, and the 
loose shadows of English thought, which are 
now so many Aunt Sallies for all the world to 
fling a jeer at, might among other races pass 
into dummy soldiers, and from dummy soldiers 
into trampling, hope-bestirred crowds, and so 
on, out of the province of Ali Baba and into 
the columns of serious reflection. Mr. Words¬ 
worth and his friends the Dakhani Brahmans 
should consider how painful it would be, when 
deprived of the consolations of religion, to be 
solemnly repressed by the Pioneer —to be placed 
under that steam-hammer which by the descent 
of a paragraph can equally crack the tiniest 
of jokes and the hardest of political nuts, can 
suppress unauthorised inquiry and crush dis¬ 
affection. 

At present the Baboo is merely a grotesque 
Brocken shadow, but in the course of geological 
ages it might harden down into something 
palpable. It is this possibility that leads Sir 
Ashly Eden to advise the Baboo to revert to 
its original type. But it is not so easy to 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 55 

become homogeneous after you have been diluted 
with the physical sciences and stirred about by 
Positivists and missionaries. “ I would I were 
a protoplastic monad! ” may sound very rhythmi¬ 
cal, poetical, and all that ; but even for a 
Baboo the aspiration is not an easy one to 
gratify. 







No. VII. 

T HE RAJA. 








































59 


No. VII. 

THE RAJA. 


Try not to laugh, Dear Vanity. I know you 
don’t mean anything by it; but these Indian 

kings are so sensitive. The other day I was 

translating to a young Raja what Val Prinsep 
had said about him in his “ Purple India.” 
He had only said that he was a dissipated 
young ass and as ugly as a baboon; but the 

boy was quite hurt and began to cry. I had 

to send for the Political Agent to quiet him 
and put him to sleep. When you consider the 
matter philosophically there is nothing per se 
ridiculous in a Raja. Take a hypothetical case: 



60 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


picture to yourself a Raja who does not get 
drunk without some good reason, who is not 
ostentatiously unfaithful to his five-and-twenty 
queens and his five-and-twenty grand duchesses, 
who does not festoon his thorax and abdomen 
with curious cutlery and jewels, who does not 
paint his face with red ochre, and who some¬ 
times takes a sidelong glance at his affairs, 
and there is no reason why you should not 
think of such a one as an Indian king. India 
is not very fastidious; so long as the Govern¬ 
ment is satisfied, the people of India do not 
much care what the Rajas are like. A peasant 
proprietor said to Mr. Caird and me the other 
day, “ We are poor cultivators ; we cannot 
afford to keep Rajas. The Rajas are for the 
Lord Sahib.” 

The young Maharaja of Kuch Parwani assures 
me that it is not considered the thing for a 
Raja at the present day to govern. “A really 
swell Raja amuses himself.” One hoards money, 
another plays at soldiering, a third is horsey, 
a fourth is amorous, and a fifth gets drunk ; 
at least so Kuch Parwani thinks. Please don’t 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


61 


say that I told you this. The Foreign Secre¬ 
tary knows what a high opinion I have of 
the Rajas : indeed he often employs me to 
whitewash them when they get into scrapes. 
“A little playful, perhaps, but no more loyal 
Prince in India! ” This is the kind of thing 
I put into the Annual Administration Reports 
of the Agencies, and I stick to it. Playful no 
doubt, but a more loyal class than the Rajas 
there is not in India. They have built their 
houses of cards on the thin crust of British 
Rule that now covers the crater, and they are ever 
ready to pour a pannikin of water into a crack 
to quench the explosive forces rumbling below. 

The amiable chief in whose house I am stay¬ 
ing to-day is exceedingly simple in his habits. 
At an early hour he issues from the zenana 
and joins two or three of his Thakores, or 
barons, who are on duty at Court, in the morning 
draught of opium. They sit in a circle, and 
a servant in the centre goes round and pours 
the kasumbha out of a brass bowl and through 
a woollen cloth into their hands, out of which 
they lap it up. Then a cardamum to take 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


62 


away the acrid after-taste. One hums drowsily 
two or three bars of an old-world song; an¬ 
other clears his throat and spits; the Chief 
yawns, and all snap their fingers, to prevent 
evil spirits skipping into his throat; a late 
riser joins the circle, and his fellow-courtiers 
give him tazim —that is, rise and salaam ; a 
coarse jest or two, and the party disperses. 
A crowd of servants swarm round the Chief 
as he shuffles slowly away. Three or four 
mace-bearers walk in front shouting, “ Umr, 
daulat ziyada ho. ,, (May your age and wealth 
increase.) A confidential servant continually 
leans forward and whispers in his ear; another 
remains close at hand with a silver tea-pot 
containing water and wrapped up in a wet 
cloth to keep it cool; a third constantly whisks 
a yak’s tail over the King’s head; a fourth 
carries my Lord’s sword ; a fifth his hand¬ 
kerchief ; and so on. Where is he going ? He 
dawdles up a narrow staircase, through a dark 
corridor, down half-a-dozen steep steps, across 
a courtyard overgrown with weeds, up another 
staircase, along another passage, and so to a 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


63 


range of heavy quilted red screens that con¬ 
ceal doors leading into the female penetralia. 
Here we must leave him. Two servants dis¬ 
appear behind the parda with their master, 

the others promptly lie down where they are, 
draw the sheets or blankets which they have 
been wearing over their faces and feet, and sleep. 

About noon we see the King again. He is 
dressed in white flowing robes with a heavy 
carcanet of emeralds round his neck. His red 
turban is tied with strings of seed-pearls and 

set off with an aigrette springing from a dia¬ 
mond brooch. He sits on the Royal mattress, 
the gclddi. A big bolster covered with green 
velvet supports his back; his sword and shield 
are gracefully disposed before him. At the 
corner of the gdddi sits a little representation 

of himself in miniature, complete even to the 
sword and shield. This is his adopted son and 
heir. For all the queens and all the grand 

duchesses are childless, and a little kinsman 
had to be transplanted from a mud village 
among the corn-fields to this dreamland palace 
to perpetuate the line. On the corners of the 


64 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


carpet on which the gaddi rests sit Thakores 
of the royal house, other Thakores sit below, 
right and left, forming two parallel lines, dwin¬ 
dling into Sardars, palace officers, and others of 
lower rank as they recede from the gaddi. 
Behind the Chief stand the servants with the 
emblems of royalty—the peacock feathers, the 
fan, the yak tail, and the umbrella (now furled). 
The confidential servant is still whispering into 
the ear of his master from time to time. This 
is durbar. No one speaks, unless to exchange 
a languid compliment with the Chief. Pre¬ 
sently essence of roses and a compound of areca 
nut and lime are circulated: then a huge silver 
pipe is brought in, the Chief takes three long 
pulls, the Thakores on the carpet each take a 
pull, and the levee breaks up amid profound 
salaams. After this—dinner, opium, and sleep. 

In the cool of the evening our King emerges 
from the palace, and, riding on a prodigiously 
fat white horse with pink points, proceeds to 
the place of carousal. A long train of horse¬ 
men follow him, and footmen run before with 
guns in red flannel covers and silver maces, 











































































































































































































ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


65 


shouting “Baja Maharaja salaamat,” &c. The 
horsemen immediately around him. are mounted 
on well-fed and richly-caparisoned steeds, with 
all the bravery of cloth-of-gold, yak tails, 
silver chains, and strings of shells; behind are 
troopers in a burlesque of English uniform ; 
and altogether in the rear is a mob of caitiffs 
on skeleton chargers, masquerading in every 
degree of shabbiness and rags, down to naked¬ 
ness and a sword. The cavalcade passes 
through the city. The inhabitants pour out of 
every door and bend to the ground. Bed 
cloths and white veils flutter at the casements 
overhead. You would hardly think that the 
spectacle was one daily enjoyed by the city. 
There is all the hurrying and eagerness of 
novelty and curiosity. Here and there a little 
shy crowd of women gather at a door and 
salute the Chief with a loud, shrill verse of 
discordant song. It is some national song of 
the Chief’s ancestors and of the old heroic 
days. The place of carousal is a bare spot 
near a large and ancient well, out of which 
grows a vast pipal-tree. Hard by is a little 

5 


66 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


temple surmounted by a red flag on a drooping 
bamboo. It is here that the Gangdr and 
Dassahra solemnities are celebrated. Arrived 
on the ground, the Raja slowly circles his 
horse ; then, jerking the thorn-bit, causes him 
to advance plunging and rearing, but dropping 
first on the near foot and then on the off foot 
with admirable precision ; and finally, making 
the white monster, now in a lather of sweat, 
rise up and walk a few steps on his hind 
legs, the Raja’s performance concludes amid 
many shouts of wonder and delight from the 
smooth-tongued courtiers. The Thakores and 
Sardars now exhibit their skill in the manege 
until the shades of night fall, when torches 
are brought, amid much salaaming, and the 
cavalcade defiles, through the city, back to the 
palace. Lights are twinkling from the higher 
casements and reflected on the lake below; 
the gola slave-girls are singing plaintive songs; 
drum and conch answer from the open court¬ 
yards. The palace is awake. The Raja, we 
will romantically presume, bounds lightly from 
his horse, and dances gaily to the harem to 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


67 


fling himself voluptuously into the luxurious 
arms of one of the five-and-twenty queens, or 
one of the five-and-twenty grand duchesses; 
and they stand for one delirious moment 
wreathed in each other’s embraces— 

While soft there breathes 

Through the cool casement, mingled with the sighs 
Of moonlight flowers, music that seems to rise 
From some still lake, so liquidly it rose, 

And, as it swell’d again at each faint close, 

The ear could track through all that maze of chords 
And young sweet voices these impassioned words— 

“ Ho, you there! fetch us a pint of gin ! 
and look sharp, will you ! ” 

For who, in time, knows whither we may vent 
The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores 
This gain of our best glory shall be sent, 

To enrich unknowing nations with our stores! 

What worlds in the yet unformed Orient 
May come refined with accents that are ours ! 

But, dear Vanity, I can see that you are 
impatient of scenes whose luxuries steal, spite 
of yourself, too deep into your soul ; besides 
I dread the effect of such warm situations on 
a certain Zuleika to whom the note of Ali 
Baba is like the thrice-distilled strains of the 
bulbul on Bendemeer’s stream. So let us 

5 * 


68 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


electrify ourselves back to prose and propriety 
by thinking of the Political Agent. Let us 
plunge into the cold waters of dreary reality 
by conjuring up a figure in tail-coat and gold 
buttons dispensing justice while H.H. the 
romantic and picturesque Kaja, G.C.S.I., 
amuses himself. Yet we hear cries from the 
gallery of “Vive M. le Kaja; vive la baga¬ 
telle ! ” 

So say we, in faint echoes, defying the 
anathemas of the Foreign Office. Do not turn 
this beautiful temple of ancient days into a 
mere mill for decrees and budgets ; but sweep 
it and purify it, and render it a fitting shrine 
for the homage and tribute of antique loyalty— 
“ that proud submission, that subordination of 
the heart which kept alive, even in servitude 
itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom.” With 
tail-coat and cocked-hat government “ the un¬ 
bought grace of life, the cheap defence of 
nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and 
heroic enterprise is gone.” 



No. VIII. 


THE POLITICAL AGENT 


A MAN IN BUCKRAM. 




K 


71 


No. yin. 

THE POLITICAL AGENT, 

A MAN IN BUCKRAM. 


This is a most curious product of the Indian 
bureaucracy. Nothing in all White Baboo- 
dom is so wonderful as the Political Agent. 
A near relation of the Empress, who was 
travelling a good deal about India some three 
or four years ago said that he would rather 
get a Political Agent, with raja, chuprassies, 
and everything complete, to take home, than 
the unfigured “ mum ” of Beluchistan, or the 
sea-aye-ee mocking bird, KoMolliensis Lyttonia. 



72 


ONE PAY IN INDIA. 


But the Political Agent cannot be taken home. 
The purple bloom fades in the scornful climate 
of England ; the paralytic swagger passes into 
sheer imbecility ; the thirteen-gun tail-talk 
reverberates in jeering echoes ; the chuprassies 
are only so many black men, and the raja is 
felt to be a joke. The Political Agent cannot 
live beyond Aden. 

The Government of India keeps its Political 
Agents scattered over the native states in 
small jungle stations. It furnishes them with 
maharajas, nawabs, rajas, and chuprassies, 
according to their rank, and it usually throws 
in a house, a gaol, a doctor, a volume of 
Aitchison’s Treaties, an escort of native 
Cavalry, a Star of India, an assistant, the 
powers of a first-class magistrate, a flag-staff, 
six camels, three tents, and a salute of eleven 
or thirteen guns. In very many cases the 
Government of India nominates a Political 
Agent to the rank of a Son to-a-Lieut.-Gover¬ 
nor, Son-in-Law-to-a-Lieut.-Governor, Son-to- 
a-Member-of-Council, or Son-to-an-Agent-to-the- 
Governor-General. Those who are thus elevated 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


73 


to the Anglo-Indian peerage need have no 
thought for the morrow, what they shall do, 
what they shall say, or wherewithal they shall 
be supplied with a knowledge of oriental 
language and occidental law. Nature clothes 
them with increasing quantities of gold lace 
and starry ornaments, and that charming, if 
unblushing, female—Lord Lytton begs me to 
write “ maid ”—Miss Anglo-Indian Promotion, 
goes skipping about among them like a joyful 
kangaroo. 

The Politicals are a Greek chorus in our 
popular burlesque, “ Empire.” The Foreign 
Secretary is the prompter. The company is 
composed of nawabs and rajahs (with the 
Duke of Buckingham as a “ super ”) Lord 
Meredith is the scene-shifter ; Sir John, the 
manager. The Secretary of State with his 
council, is in the stage-box; the House of 
Commons in the stalls ; the London Press in 
the gallery ; the East Indian Association, 
Exeter Hall, Professor Fawcett, Mr. Hyndman, 
and the criminal classes generally in the pit ; 
while those naughty little Scotch boys, the 


74 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


shock-headed Duke and Monty Duff, who 
once tried to turn down the lights, pervade 
the house with a policeman on their horizon 
As we enter the theatre a dozen chiefs are 
dancing in the ballet to express their joy at 
the termination of the Afghan war. The 
political choreutce are clapping their hands, 
encouraging them by name and pointing them 
out to the gallery. 

The government of a native state by clerks 
and chuprassies, with a beautiful faineant 
Political Agent for Sundays and Hindu festi¬ 
vals, is, I am told, a thing of the past. 
Colonel Henderson, the imperial “ Peeler,” tells 
me so, and he ought to know, for he is a 
kind of demi-official superintendent of Thugs 
and Agents. Nowadays, my informant assures 
me, the Political Agents undergo a regular 
training in a Madras Cavalry Regiment, or in 
the Central India Horse, or on the Vice¬ 
roy’s Staff, and if they have to take charge 
of a Mahratta State they are obliged to pass 
an examination in classical Persian poetry. 
This is as it ought to be. The intricacies 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


75 


of Oriental intrigue and the manifold com¬ 
plication of tenure and revenue that entangle 
administrative procedure in the protected 
principalities, will unravel themselves in pre¬ 
sence of men who have enjoyed such advan¬ 
tages. 

When I first came out to this country I was 
placed in charge of three degrees of latitude 
and eight of longitude in Raj put ana that I 
might learn the language. The soil was 
sandy, the tenure feudal (zabardast as we 
call it in India), and the Raja a lunatic by 
nature and a dipsomaniac by education. He 
had been educated by his grandmamma and 
the hereditary Minister. I found that his 
grandmamma and the hereditary Minister were 
most anxious to relieve me of the most em¬ 
barrassing details of Government, so I handed 
them a copy of the Ten Commandments, 
underlining two that I thought might be use¬ 
ful, and put them in charge. They were 
old-fashioned in their methods—like Sir Billy 
Jones ; • but their results were admirable. In 
two years the revenue was reduced from ten 


76 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


to two lakhs of rupees, and the expenditure 
proportionately increased. A bridge, a summer¬ 
house, and a school were built ; and I wrote 
the longest “ Administration Report ” that has 
ever issued from the Zulmabad Residency. 
When I left money was so cheap' and lightly 
regarded that I sold my old buggy horse for 
two thousand rupees to grandmamma, with 
many mutual expressions of good-will—through 
a curtain— and I have not been paid to this 
day. But since then the horse-market has been 
ruined in the native states by these imperial 
melas and durbars. A poor Political has no 
chance against these Government-of-India people, 
who come down with strings of three-legged 
horses, and—no, I won’t say they sell them to 
the chiefs—I should be having a commission 
of my khidmatgars sitting upon me, like poor 
Har Sahai, who was beaten by Mr. Saunders, 
and Malhar Rao Gaikwar, who fancied his 
Resident was going to poison him. 

I like to see a Political up at Simla wooing 
that hoyden Promotion in her own sequestered 
bower. It is good to see Hercules toiling at 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


77 


the feet of Omphale. It is good to see Pistol 
fed upon leeks by Under-Secretaries and women. 
How simple he is ! How boyish he can be, 
and yet how intense ! He will play leap frog 
at Annandale ; he will paddle about in the 
stream below the water-falls without shoes and 
stockings ; but if you allude in the most dis¬ 
tant way to rajas or durbars, he lets down his 
face a couple of holes and talks like a weather 
prophet. He will be so interesting that you 
can hardly bear it ; so interesting that you 
will feel sorry he is not talking to the Governor- 
General up at Peterhoff. 










No. IX. 


THE COLLECTOR. 



81 


No. IX. 

THE COLLECTOR. 


Was it not the Bishop of Bombay who said 
that man was an automaton plus the mirror 
of consciousness ? The Government of every 
Indian province is an automaton plus the 
mirror of consciousness. The Secretariat is 
consciousness, and the Collectors form the 
automaton. The Collector works, and the 
Secretariat observes and registers. 

To the people of India the Collector is the 
Imperial Government. He watches over their 
welfare in the many facets which reflect our 
civilisation. He establishes schools, dispensaries, 

6 



82 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


gaols, and courts of justice. He levies the 
rent of their fields, he fixes the tariff, and he 

nominates to every appointment, from that of 

road-sweeper, or constable, to the great blood¬ 
sucking offices round the Court and Treasury. 
As for Boards of Revenue and Lieutenant- 
Governors who occasionally come sweeping 
across the country with their locust hosts of 
servants and petty officials, they are but an 

occasional nightmare ; while the Governor- 
General is a mere shadow in the background 
of thought, half blended with 4 4 John Company 
Bahadur ” and other myths of the dawn. 

The Collector lives in a long rambling bun¬ 
galow furnished with folding chairs and tables, 
and in every way marked by the provisional 
arrangements of camp life. He seems to have 

just arrived from out of the firmament of 
green fields and mango groves that encircles 
the little station where he lives ; or he seems 
just about to pass away into it again. The 
shooting-howdahs are lying in the verandah, 
the elephant of a neighbouring landholder is 
swinging his hind foot to and fro under a tree, 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


83 


or switching up straw and leaves on to his 

back, a dozen camels are lying down in a 
circle making bubbling noises, and tents are 
pitched here and there to dry, like so many 
white wings on which the whole establishment is 
about to rise and fly away-—fly away into “ the 
district,” which is the correct expression for the 
vast expanse of level plain melting into blue 

sky on the wide horizon-circle around. 

The Collector is a bustling man. He is 

always in a hurry. His multitudinous duties 
succeed one another so fast that one is never 
ended before the next begins. A mysterious 
thing called “the Joint” comes gleaning after 
him, I believe, and completes the inchoate work. 

The verandah is full of fat black men in 

clean linen waiting for interviews. They are 
bankers, shopkeepers, and landowners, who 
have only come to “ pay their respects,” with 
ever so little a petition as a corollary. The 
chuprassie-vultures hover about them. Each 
of these obscene fowls has received a gratifica¬ 
tion from each of the clean fat men; else the 

clean fat men would not be in the verandah. 

6 * 


84 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


This import tax is a wholesome restraint upon 
the excessive visiting tendencies of wealthy 
men of colour. Brass dishes filled with pista¬ 
chio nuts and candied sugar are ostentatiously 
displayed here and there; they are the oblations 
of the would-be visitors. The English call 
these offerings “dollies”; the natives dali. 
They represent in the profuse East the visiting 
cards of the meagre West. 

Although from our lofty point of observation, 
among the pine trees, the Collector seems to 
be of the smallest social calibre, a mere 
carronade, not to be distinguished by any 
proper name, in his own district he is a 
Woolwich Infant; and a little community of 
microscopicals,—doctors, engineers, inspectors of 
schools, and assistant magistrates, look up to 
him as to a magnate. 

They tell little stories of his weaknesses and 
eccentricities, and his wife is considered a 
person entitled “ to give herself airs ” (within 
the district) if she feels so disposed; while to 
their high dinners is allowed the use of cham¬ 
pagne and “ Europe ” talk on aesthetic subjects. 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


85 


The Collector is not, however, permitted to 
wear a chimney-pot hat and gloves on Sunday 
(unless he has been in the Provincial Secre¬ 
tariat as a boy); a Terai hat is sufficient for a 
Collector. 

A Collector is usually a sportsman; when he 
is a poet, a co-respondent, or a neologist it is 
thought rather a pity; and he is spoken of in 
undertones. Neology is considered especially 
reprehensible. The junior member of the 
Board of Kevenue, or even the commissioner 
of a division (if he be pakka), may question the 
literal inspiration of Genesis; but it is not 
good form for a Collector to tamper with his 
Bible. A Collector should have no leisure for 
opinions of any sort. 

I have said that a Collector is usually a 
sportsman. In this capacity he is frequently 
made use of by the Viceroy and ’long-shore 
Governors, as he is an adept at showing sport 
to globe-trotters. The villagers who live on 
the borders of the jungle will generally turn out 
and beat for the Collector; and the petty chief 
who owns the jungle always keeps a tiger or 


86 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


two for district officers. A Political Agent’s 
tiger is known to be a domestic animal suitable 
for delicate noble lords travelling for health; 
but a Collector’s tiger is often a wild beast, 
although reared upon buffalo calves and accus¬ 
tomed to be driven. The Collector, who is 
always the most unselfish and hospitable of men, 
only kills the fatted tiger for persons of distinc¬ 
tion with letters of introduction. Any common 
jungle tiger, even a man-eater, is good enough 
for himself and his friends. 

The Collector never ventures to approach 
Simla, when on leave. At Simla people would 
stare and raise their eye-brows if they heard 
that a Collector was on the hill. They would 
ask what sort of a thing a Collector was. 
The Press Commissioner would be sent to 
interview it. The children at Peterhoff would 
send for it to play with. So the clodhopping 
Collector goes to Naini Tal or Darjiling, 
where he is known either as Ellenborough 
Higgins, or Higgins of Gharibpur, in territorial 
fashion. Here he is understood. Here he 
can babble of his Bandobast, his Balbacha and 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


87 


his Bawarchikhana ; and here he can speak in 
familiar accents of his neighbours, Dalhousie 
Smith and Cornwallis Jones. All day long he 
strides up and down the club verandah with his 
old Haileybury chum, Teignmouth Tompkins ; 
and they compare experiences of the hunting- 
field and office, and denounce in unmeasured 
terms of Oriental vituperation the new sort 
of civilian who moves about with the Penal 
Code under his arm and measures his authority 
by statute, clause and section. 

In England the Collector is to be found 
riding at anchor in the Bandicoot Club. He 
makes two or three hurried cruises to his 
native village, where he finds himself half for¬ 
gotten. This sours him. The climate seems 
worse than of old, the means of locomotion at 
his disposal are inconvenient and expensive ; he 
yearns for the sunshine and elephants of Gharib- 
pur; and returns, an older and a quieter man. 

The afternoon of life is throwing longer 
shadows, the Acheron of promotion is gaping 
before him ; he falls into a Commissionership ; 
still deeper into an officiating seat on the Board 


88 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


of Revenue. Facilis est descensus , etc . Nothing 
will save him now; transmigration has set in ; 
the gates of Simla fly open ; it is all over. 
Let us pray that his halo may fit him. 



BABY IN PARTIBUS. 






91 


No. X. 

BABY IN PARTIBUS. 


The Empire has done less for Anglo-Indian 
Babies than for any class of the great exile 
community. Legislation provides them with 
neither rattle nor coral, privilege leave nor 
pension. Papa has a Raja and Star of India 
to play with ; Mamma the Warrant of Prece¬ 
dence and the Hill Captains ; but Baby has 
nothing—not even a missionary ; Baby is 
without the amusement of the meanest 
cannibal. 

Baby is debarred from the society of his 
compatriots. His father is cramped and frozen 



92 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


with the chill cares of office; his mother is 
deadened by the gloomy routine of economy 
and fashion ; custom lies upon her with a 
weight heavy as frost and deep almost as life ; 
the fountains of natural fancy and mirth are 
frozen over ; so Baby lisps his dawn paeans in 
soft Oriental accents, wakening harmonious 
echoes among those impulsive and impression¬ 
able children of Nature who masque themselves 
in the black slough of Bearers and Ayahs; and 
Baby blubbers in Hindustani. 

The Ayah and Bearer sit with Baby in the 
verandah on a little carpet ; broken toys and 
withered flowers lie around. They croon to 
baby some old-world katabaukalesis ; while 
beauty, born of murmuring sound, passes into 
Baby’s eyes. The squirrel sits chirruping 
familiarly on the edge of the verandah with his 
tail in the air and some uncracked pericarp in 
his uplifted hands, the kite circles aloft and 
whistles a shrill and mournful note, the spar¬ 
rows chatter, the crow clears his throat, the 
minas scream discordantly, and Baby’s soft, re¬ 
ceptive nature thus absorbs an Indian language. 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


93 


Very soon Baby will think from right to 
left, and will lisp in the luxuriant bloom of 
Oriental hyperbole. 

In the evening Baby will go out for an 
airing with the Bearer and Ayah, and while 
they dawdle along the dusty road, or sit on 
kerb-stones and on culvert parapets, he will 
listen to the extensile tale of their simple 
sorrows. He will hear with a sigh that the 
profits of petty larceny are declining; he 

will be taught to regret the increasing infirmi¬ 
ties of his Papa’s temper ; and portraits 
in sepia of his Mamma will be observed by 
him to excite laughter mingled with dark 

impulsive words. Thus there will pass into 

Baby’s eyes glances of suspicious questionings, 
“ the blank misgivings of a creature moving 
about in worlds not realised.” 

In the long summer days Baby will patter 
listlessly about the darkened rooms accom¬ 
panied by his suite, who carry a feeding bottle 
—Maw’s Patent Feeding Bottle—just as the 

Sergeant-at-Arms carries the mace; and, from 
time to time, little Mister Speaker will 


94 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


squat down on his dear little hams and take a 
refreshing pull or two. At breakfast and 
luncheon little Mister Speaker will straggle 
into the dining-room, and fond parents will 
give him a tid-bit of many soft dainties, to he 
washed down with brandy and water, beer 
sherry or other alcoholic draught. On such 
broken meals Baby is raised. 

The little drawn face, etiolated and weary 
looking, recommends sleep; but Baby is a bad 
sleeper. The Bearer-in-waiting carries about 
a small pillow all day long, and from time to 
time Baby is applied to it. He frets and 
cries, and they brood over him, humming some 
plaintive Indian lullaby. Still he turns rest¬ 
lessly and whimpers, though they pat him and 
shampoo him, and call him fond names, and tell 
him soothing stories of bulbuls and flowers and 
woolly sheep. But Baby does not sleep, and 
even Indian patience is exhausted. Both 
Ayah and Bearer would like to slip away to 
their mud houses at the other end of the com¬ 
pound and have a pull at the fragrant huqqa 
and a gossip with the saices; but while Sunny 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


95 


Baba is at large, and might at any moment 
make a raid on Mamma, who is dozing over a 
novel on a spider-chair near the mouth of the 
thermantidote, the Ayah and Bearer dare not 
leave their charge. So Sunny Baba must 

sleep, and the Bearer has in the folds of his 
waist-cloth a little black fragment of the awful 
sleep - compeller, and Baby is drugged into 
a deep uneasy sleep of delirious, racking 
dreams. 

Day by day Baby grows paler, day by day 
thinner, day by day a stranger light burns in 
his bonny eyes. Weird thoughts sweep 

through Baby’s brain, weird questions startle 
Mamma out of the golden languors in which 
she is steeped, weird words frighten the gentle 
Ayah as she fondles her darling. The current 
of babble and laughter has almost ceased to 
flow. Baby lies silent in the Ayah’s lap 
staring at the ceiling. He clasps a broken toy 
with wasted fingers. His Bearer comes with 

some old watchword of fun ; Baby smiles 

faintly, but makes no response. The old man 
takes him tenderly in his arms and carries 


96 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


him to the verandah; Baby’s head falls heavily 
on his shoulder. 

The outer world lies dimly round Baby; 
within, strange shadows are flitting by. The 
wee body is pressing heavily upon the spirit; 
Baby is becoming conscious of the burthen. 
He will be quiet for hours on his little cot; 
he does not sleep, but he dreams. Earth’s joys 
and lights are fast fading out of those resilient 
eyes ; Baby’s spirit is waiting on the shores 
of eternity, and already hears “ the mighty 
waters rolling evermore.” 

The broken toys are swept away into a 
corner : a silence and fear have fallen upon the 
household; black servants weep, their mis¬ 
tress seeks refuge in headache and smelling- 
salts : the hard father feels a strange, an irre¬ 
pressible welling up of little memories. He 
loves the golden-haired boy ; he hardly knew 
it before. If he could only hear once more 
the merry laugh, the chatter, and the shout¬ 
ing ! But he cannot hear it any more ; he 
will never hear his child’s voice again. Baby 
has passed into the far-away Thought-World. 






































ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


97 


Baby is now only a dream and a memory, only 
the recollection of a music that is heard no 
more. Baby has crossed that cloudy, storm- 
driven bourn of speculation and fear whither 
we are all tending. 

“ A few white bones upon a lonely sand, 

A rotting corpse beneath the meadow grass, 

That cannot hear the footsteps as they pass, 

Memorial urns pressed by some foolish hand 
Have been for all the goal of troublous fears, 

Ah ! breaking hearts and faint eyes dim with tears, 
And momentary hope by breezes fanned 
To flame that ever fading falls again, 

And leaves but blacker night and deeper pain, 

Have been the mould of life in every land.” 

Baby is planted out for evermore in the 
dank and weedy little cemetery that lies on the 
outskirts of the station where he lived and 
died. Those golden curls, those soft and 
rounded limbs, and that laughing mouth, are 
given up to darkness and the eternal hunger 
of corruption. Through sunshine and rain, 
through the long days of summer, through 
the long nights of winter, for ever, for ever, 
Baby lies silent and dreamless under that 
waving grass. The bee will hum overhead for 

7 


98 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


evermore, and the swallow glance among the 
cypress. The butterfly will flutter for ages 
and ages among the rank flowers—Baby will 
still lie there. Come away, come away, your 
cheeks are pale, it cannot be, we cannot believe 
it, we must not remember it ; other Baby 
voices will re-kindle our life and love, Baby’s 
toys will pass to other Baby hands. All will 
change ; we will change. 

“Yet, darling, but come back to me, 

Whatever change the years have wrought, 

I find not yet one lonely thought 
That cries against my wish for thee.” 





No. XI. 

THE RED CHUPRASS1E; 

OB, THE COBBUPT LICTOE. 


7 * 











. 




101 





No. XI. 

THE BED CHUPBASSIE; 

OR, THE CORRUPT LICTOR.* 


The red chuprassie is our Colorado beetle, 
our potato disease, our Home Ruler, our cup¬ 
board skeleton, the little rift in our lute. The 
red-coated chuprassie is a cancer in our 
Administration. To be rid of it there is 
hardly any surgical operation we would not 
cheerfully undergo. You might extract the 


* The chuprassies are official messengers, wearing 
Imperial livery, who are attached to civil officers in 
India. 




102 


ONE DAY TN INDIA. 


Bishop of Bombay, amputate the Governor of 
Madras, put a seton in the pay and allowances 
of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and we 
should smile. 

The red chuprassie is ubiquitous ; he is in 

the verandah of every official’s house in India, 
from that of the Governor-General downwards; 
he is in the portico of every Court of Justice, 
every Treasury, every Public Office, every 
Government School, every Government Dispen¬ 
sary in the country. He walks behind the Col¬ 
lector ; he follows the conservancy carts ; he 
prowls about the candidate for employment ; he 
hovers over the accused and accuser ; he haunts 
the Raja ,* he infests the tax-payer. 

He wears the Imperial livery; he is to the 
entire population of India the exponent of 

British Rule; he is the mother-in-law of liars, 
the high-priest of extortioners, and the receiver- 
general of bribes. 

Through this refracting medium the people 
of India see their rulers. The chuprassie 

paints his master in colours drawn from his 

own black heart. Every lie he tells, every 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


103 


insinuation he throws out, every demand he 
makes is endorsed with his master’s name. 
He is the arch-slanderer of our name in 
India. 

There is no city in India, no mofussil- 
station, no little settlement of officials far-up 
country, in which the chuprassie does not find 
sworn brothers and confederates. The cut- 
cherry clerks and the police are with him 
everywhere ; higher native officials are often 
on his side. 

He sits at the receipt of custom in the 
Collector’s verandah, and no native visitor 
dare approach who has not conciliated him 
with money. The candidate for employment, 
educated in our schools, and pregnant with 
words about purity, equality, justice, political 
economy, and all the rest of it, addresses him 
with joined hands as “ Maharaj,” and slips 
silver into his itching palm. The successful 
place-hunter pays him a feudal relief on 
receiving office or promotion, and benovolences 
flow in from all who have anything to hope or 
fear from those in power. 


104 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


In the Native States the chuprassie flourishes 
rampantly. He receives a regular salary, 
through their representatives or vakils at the 
agencies, from all the native chiefs round 
about, and on all occasions of visits or return 
visits, durbars, religious festivals, or public 
ceremonials, he claims and receives preposte¬ 
rous fees. The Rajas, whose dignity is always 
exceedingly delicate, stand in great fear of 
the chuprassies. They believe that on public 
occasions the chuprassies have sometimes the 
power of sicklying them o’er with the pale 
cast of neglect. 

English officers who have become de-Euro- 
peanised from long residence among natives, 
or by the frequent performance of petty cere¬ 
monial duties of an Oriental hue, employ 
chuprassies to aggrandise their importance. 
They always figure on a background of red 
chuprassies. Such officials are what Lord 
Lytton calls “ White Baboos.” 

A great Maharaja once told me that it was 
the tyranny of the Government chuprassies 
that made him take to drink. He spoke of 






































































































































ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


105 


them as 44 the Pindarries of modern India.” 
He had a theory that the small pay we gave 

them accounted for their evil courses. (A 
chuprassie gets about eight pounds sterling a 
year.) He added that if we saw a chuprassie 
on seven rupees a month living overtly at the 
rate of a thousand, we ought immediately to 
appoint him an attache , or put him in gaol. 

I make a simple rule in my own establish¬ 
ment of dismissing a chuprassie as soon as he 
begins to wax fat. A native cannot become 
rich without waxing fat, because wealth is 
primarily enjoyed by the mild Gentoo as a 

means of procuring greasy food in large 
quantities. His secondary enjoyment is to 
sit upon it. He digs a hole in the ground for 
his rupees, and broods over them, like a great 
obscene fowl. If you see a native sitting very 
hard on the same place day after day, you 

will find it worth your while to dig him 

up. Shares in this are better than the 
Madras gold mines. 

In early Company days, when the Empire 
was a baby, the European writers regarded 


106 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


with a kindly eye those profuse Orientals who 
went about bearing gifts; but Lord Clive 
closed this branch of the business, and it has 
been taken up by our scarlet-runners, or 
verandah parasites, in our name. Now, dear 
Vanity, you may call me a ftussophile, or by 
any other marine term of endearment you like, 
if I don’t think the old plan were the better 
of the two. We ourselves could conduct 
corruption decently; but to be responsible for 
corruption over which we exercise no control 
is to lose the credit of a good name and the 
profits of a bad one. 

I hear that the Government of India pro¬ 
poses to form a mixed committee of Kajas and 
chuprassies to discuss the question as to 
whether native chiefs ever give bribes and 
native servants ever take them. It is expected 
that a report favourable to Indian morality will 
be the result. Of course Kaja Joe Hookham 
will preside. 



No. XTI. 

THE PLANTER; 


A FARMER PRINCE. 




109 


No. XII. 

THE PLANTER; 

A FARMER PRINCE. 


The Planter lives to-day as we all lived fifty 
years ago. He lives in state and bounty, like 
the Lord of Burleigh. He lives like that fine 
old English gentleman who had an old estate, 
and who kept up his old mansion at a bountiful 
old rate. He lives in a grand wholesale man¬ 
ner ; he lives in round numbers; he lives like 
a hero. Everything is Homeric about him. 
He establishes himself firmly in the land with 
great joy and plenty; and he gathers round 
him all that makes life full-toned and har- 



110 


ONE DAT IN INDIA. 


monions, from the grand timbre of draught-ale 
and the organ-thunder of hunting, to the 
piccolo and tintinnabulum of Poker and maras¬ 
chino. His life is a fresco-painting, on which 
some Cyclopaean Raphaelite has poured his 
rainbows from a fire-engine of a hundred- 
elephant power. 

We paltry officials live meanly in pen-and- 
ink sketches. Our little life is rounded by a 
dream of promotion and pension. We toil, we 
slave; we put by money, we pinch ourselves. 

We are hardly fit to live in this beautiful 
world, with its laughing girls and grapes, its 

Garnet Wolseleys and bulbuls. We go moping 
through its glories in green spectacles, befoul¬ 
ing it with our loathsome statistics and reports. 
The sweet air of heaven, the blue firmament, 

and the everlasting hills do not satisfy our 

poisoned hearts ; so we make to ourselves a 
little tin-pot world of blotted-paper, debased 
rupees, graded lists, and tinsel honours ; we 
try to feed our lungs on its typhoidal effluvia. 
Aroint thee, Comptroller and Accountant- 
General, with all thy griesly crew ! Thou art 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


Ill 


worse than the blind Fury with the abhorred 
shears; for thou slittest my thin-spun-pay 
wearing spectacles, thrice branded varlet! 

Dear Vanity, of course you understand that 
I do not allude to the amiable old gentleman 
who controls our Accounts Department, who 
is the mirror of tenderness. The person I 
would impale is a creation of my own wrath, 
a mere official type struck in frenzied fancy. 

Let us soothe ourselves by contemplating 
the Planter and his generous, simple life. It 
calms one to look at him. He is something 
placid, strong, and easeful. Without wishing 
to appear obsequious, I always feel disposed to 
borrow money when I meet a substantial 
Planter. He inspires confidence. I grasp his 
strong hand ; I take him (figuratively) to my 
heart, while the desire to bank with him wells 
up mysteriously in my bosom. 

He lives in a grand old bungalow, sur¬ 
rounded by ancient trees. Large rooms open 
upon one another on every side in long vistas; 
a broad and hospitable-looking verandah girds 
all. Everywhere trophies of the chase meet 


112 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


the eye. We walk upon cool matting; we 
recline upon long-armed chairs ; low and heavy 
punkahs swing overhead ; a sweet breathing of 

wet khaskhas grass comes sobbing out of the 
thermantidote ; and a gigantic, but gentle, 

khidmatgar is always at our elbow with long 
glasses on a silver tray. This man’s name is 
Nubby Bux, but he means nothing by it, and 
a child might play with him. I often say to 
him in a caressing tone “ Peg lao” ; and he is 
grateful for any little attention of this sort. 

It is near noon. My friend Mr. Great- 

Heart, familiarly known as “ Jamie Mac¬ 
donald,” has been taking me over the factory 
and stables. We have been out since early 
morning on the jumpiest and beaniest of 

Waler mares. I am not killed, but a good 
deal shaken. The glass trembles in my hand. 
I have an absorbing thirst, and I drink 
copiously, almost passionately. My out¬ 
stretched legs are reposing on the arms of my 
chair and I stiffen into an attitude of rest. I 
hear my host splashing and singing in his 
tub. 



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ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


113 


Breakfast is a meal conceived in a large 
and liberal spirit. We pass from disli to dish 
through all the compass of a banquet, the 
diapason closing full in beer. Several joyful 

assistants, whose appetites would take first- 
class honours at any cattle show, join the hunt 
and are well in at the beer. What tales are 
told! I feel glad that Mrs. Mary Somerville and 
Dr. Watts are not present. I keep looking 

round to see that no bishop comes into the 
room. It is a comfort to me to think that 
Bishop Heber is dead. I gave up blushing five 
years ago when I entered the Secretariat; but 

if at this moment Sir William Jones were to 
enter, or Mr. Whitley Stokes with his child-like 
heart and his Cymric vocabulary, I believe I 
should be strangely affected. 

The day welters on through drink and 
billiards. In the afternoon more joyful 

Planters drop in, and we play a rubber. From 
whist to the polo ground, where I see the 
merry men of Tirhoot play the best and 
fastest game that the world can show. At 
night high carousals and potations pottle deep. 

8 


114 


ONE DAT IN INDIA. 


Next morning sees the entire party in the 
khadar of the river, mounted on Arabs, armed 
with spears, hunting Jamie Macdonald’s Caly- 
donian boar. These Scotchmen never forget 
their nationality. 

And while these joyful Planters are thus 
rejoicing, the indigo is growing silently all 
round. While they play, Nature works for 
them. So does the patient black man ; he 

smokes his huqqa and keeps an eye on the 

rising crop. 

You will have learnt from Mr. Caird that 

indigo grows in cakes (the ale is imported) ; to 

his description of the process of manufacture 
I can only add that the juice is generally 
expressed in the vernacular. You give a cake 
of the raw material to a coloured servant, you 
stand over him to see that he doesn’t eat it, 
and your assistant canes him slowly as he 
squeezes the juice into a blue bottle. Blue 
pills are made of the refuse : your female ser¬ 
vants use aniline dyes; and there you are. If 
any one dies in any other way you can refuse 
him the rites of cremation; fine him four annas; 


one day in india'. 


115 


and warn him not to do it again. This is a 
burning question in Tirhoot and occasions 
much litigation. 

Jamie Macdonald has now a contract for 
dyeing the blue ribbons of the turf; Tommy 
Begg has taken the blue boars and the Oxford 
Blues; and Bobby Thomas does the blue- 
books and the True Blues. It may not be 
generally known that the aristocracy do not 
employ aniline dyes for their blue blood. 
The minor planters do business chiefly in 
blue stockings, blue bonnets, blue bottles, 
blue beards, and blue coats. For more in¬ 
formation of this kind I can only refer 
you to Mr. Caird and the Nineteenth Cen¬ 
tury. 

Some Planters grow tea, coffee, lac, mother- 
of-pearl, pickles, poppadums and curry powder 
—but now I am becoming encyclopaedic and 
scientific, and trespassing on ground already 
taken up by the Famine Commission. 

Fewer Planters are killed now by the wild 
camels who roam over the mango fields, but a 
good deal of damage is still done to the prickly 

8 * 


116 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


pear trees. Mr. Cunningham has written 
an interesting note on this. Rewards have 
still to be offered for dead tigers and persons 
who have died of starvation. “ When the 
Government will not give a doit to relieve a 
lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a 
dead Indian.” 



No. XIII. 


THE EURASIAN; 

A STUDY IN CHIARO-OSCURO. 


















119 


No. XIII. 

THE EURASIAN; 

A STUDY IN CHIARO-OSCURO. 


The Anglo-Indian has a very fine eye for 
colour. He will mark down “ one anna in 
the rupee ” with unerring certainty ; he will 
suspect smaller coin. He will tell you how he 
can detect an adulterated European by his 
knuckles, his nails, his eye-brows, his pronun¬ 
ciation of the vowels, and his conception of 
propriety in dress, manner, and conduct. 

To the thoroughbred Anglo-Indian, whose 
blood has distilled through Haileybury for 
three generations, and whose cousins to the 
fourth degree are Collectors and Indian Army 



120 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


Colonels, the Eurasian, however fair he may 
be, is a bete noir. Mrs. Ellenborough Higgins 
is always setting, or pointing at black blood. 

And sometimes the whitey-brown man is 
objectionable. He is vain, apt to take offence, 
sly, indolent, sensuous ; and, like Eeuben, 
“ unstable as water.” He has a facile smile, 
a clammy hand, a manner either forward or 
obsequious, a mincing gait, and not always 

the snowiest linen. 

Towards natives the Eurasian is cold, 
haughty, and formal ; and this attitude is 

repaid, with interest, in scorn and hatred. 
There is no concealing the fact that to the mild 
Gentoo the Eurasian is a very distasteful object. 

But having said this, the case for the prose¬ 
cution closes, and we may turn to the many 
soft and gentle graces which the Eurasian 
develops. 

In all the relations of family life the 
Eurasian is admirable. He is a dutiful son, 
a circumspect husband, and an affectionate 

father. He seldom runs through a fortune ; 
he hardly ever elopes with a young lady of 


fashion; he is not in the habit of cutting off 
his son with a shilling ; and he is an infre¬ 
quent worshipper in that Temple of Separation 
where Decrees Nisi sever the Gordian knots of 
Hymen. 

As a citizen he is zealously loyal. He will 
speak at municipal meetings, write letters 
about drainage and conservancy to the papers, 
observe local holidays in his best clothes, and 
attend funerals. 

The Eurasian is a methodical and trust¬ 
worthy clerk, and often occupies a position of 
great trust and responsibility in our public 
offices. He is not bold or original, like Sir 
Andrew Clerk ; or amusing, like Mr. Stokes ; 
but he does what work is given him to do 
without overstepping the modesty of nature. 

The Eurasian girl is often pretty and grace¬ 
ful ; and, if the solution of India in her veins 
be weak, there is an unconventionality and 
naivete sometimes which undoubtedly has a 

charm ; and which, my dear friend, J. H-, 

of the 110th Clodhoppers (Lord Cardwell's 
Own Clodhoppers) never could resist: “What 



122 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


though upon her lips there hung the accents 
of the tchi-tchi tongue.” 

A good many Eurasians who are not clerks 
in public offices, or telegraph signallers, or 
merchants, are loafers. They are passed on 
wherever they are found, to the next station, 
and thus they are kept in healthy circulation 
throughout India. They are all in search of 
employment on the railway ; but, as a pro¬ 
visional arrangement, to meet the more imme¬ 
diate and pressing exigencies of life, they will 
accept a small gratuity. They are mainly 
supported by municipalities, who keep them 
in brandy, rice, and railway-tickets out of 
funds raised for this purpose. Workhouses 
and Malacca canes have still to be tried. 

Bishop G-ell’s plan for colonising the Lacca¬ 
dives and Cocos with these loafers has not 
met with much acceptance at Simla. The 
Home Secretary does not see from what Im¬ 
perial fund they can be supplied with bathing 
drawers and barrel organs; but the Home 
Secretary ought to know that there is a philan¬ 
thropic society at Lucknow of the disinterested, 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


123 


romantic, Turnerelli type, ready to fnrnish all 
the wants of a young colony, from under¬ 
clothing to Eno’s fruit salt. 

A great many wise proposals emanate from 
Simla as regards some artificial future for the 
Eurasian. One Ten-thousand-pounder asks 
Creation in a petulant tone of surprise why 
Creation does not make the Eurasian a car¬ 
penter ; another looks round the windy hills 
and wonders why somebody does not make 
the Eurasian a high farmer. The shovel-hats 
are surprised that the Eurasian does not 
become a missionary, or a schoolmaster, or a 
policeman, or something of that sort. The 
native papers say, “ Deport him”; the white 
prints say, “ Make him a soldier ” ; and the 
Eurasian himself says, “Make me a Commis¬ 
sioner, or give me a pension.” In the mean¬ 
time, while nothing is being done, we can rail 
at the Eurasian for not being as we are. 

“ Let us sit on the thrones 
In a purple sublimity, 

And grind down men’s bones 
To a pale unanimity.” 


124 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


There is no proper classification of the 
mixed race in India as there is in America. 
The convenient term quadroon for instance, 
instead of “four annas in the rupee,” is quite 
unknown ; the consequence is that everyone 
—from Anna Maria De Souza, the “ Portu¬ 
guese ” cook, a nobleman on whose cheek the 
best shoe-blacking would leave a white mark, 
to pretty Miss Fitzalan Courtney, of the 
Bombay Fencibles, who is as white as an 
Italian princess—is called an “Eurasian.” 

Do you know, dear Vanity, that it is not 
impossible that King Asoka (of the Edict 
Pillars), the “ Constantine of Buddhism,” was 
an Eurasian. I have not got the works of 
Arrian, or Mr. Leithridge’s “ History of the 
World ” at hand, but I have some recollection 
of Sandracottus, or one of Asoka’s fathers 
or grandfathers, marrying a Miss Megasthenes, 
or Seleucus. With such memories, no wonder 
they call us “ Mean Whites.” 



No. XIV. 


THE VILLAGER 







127 


No. XIY. 

THE VILLAGER. 


“ Venio nunc ad voluptates agricolarum, quibus ego ” 
(like the Famine Commissioners) “ incredibiliter delector.” 


I missed two people at the Delhi Assemblage 
of 1877. All the gram-fed secretaries and 
most of the alcoholic chiefs were there ; but 
the famine-haunted villager and the delirium- 
shattered, opium-eating Chinaman, who had 
to pay the bill, were not present. 

I cannot understand why Viceroys and 

English newspapers call the Indian cultivator 




128 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


a “ riot.” He never amounts to a riot if you 
treat him properly. He may be a disorderly 
crowd sometimes; but that is oniy when you 
embody him in a police force or convert him 
into cavalry. The atomic disembodied villager 
has no notion of rioting, ga-ira singing, or 
any of the tomfooleries of revolution. These 
pastimes are for men who are both idle and 
frivolous. When our villager wants to realise 
a political idea, he dies of famine. This has 
about it a certain air of seriousness. A man 
will not die of famine unless he be in earnest. 

Lord Bacon’s apothegm was that Eating 
maketh a full man ; and it would be better to 
give the starving cultivator Bacon than the 
report of that Commission (which we cannot 
name without tears and laughter) which goes 
to work on the assumption that writing maketh 
a full man —that to write over a certain area 
of paper will fill the collapsed cuticles of the 
agricultural class throughout India. 

When the idea of holding famines was first 
started, I proposed to illustrate the project 
by stopping the pay and allowances of the 







































ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


129 


Government of India for a month. But this did 
not listen to my proposal. People seldom 
listen to my proposals ; and sometimes I think 
that this accounts for my constitutional 
melancholy. 

You will ask, “ What has all this talk of 

food and famine to do with the villager ? ” I 
reply, “ Everything.” Famine is the horizon 
of the Indian villager ; insufficient food is the 
foreground. And this is the more extraor¬ 
dinary since the villager is surrounded by a 

dreamland of plenty. Everywhere you see 
fields flooded deep with millet and wheat. 
The village and its old trees have to climb on 
to a knoll to keep their feet out of the glorious 
poppy and the luscious sugar-cane. Sump¬ 

tuous cream-coloured bullocks move sleepily 
about with an air of luxurious sloth; and sleek 
Brahmans utter their lazy prayers while 
bathing languidly in the water and sunshine 

of the tank. Even the buffaloes have nothing 
to do, but float the livelong day deeply im¬ 
mersed in the bulrushes. Everything is 
steeped in repose. The bees murmur their 


130 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


idylls among the flowers ; the doves moan 
their amorous complaints from the shady leaf¬ 
age of pipal trees; out of the cool recesses of 
wells the idle cooing of the pigeons ascends 
into the summer-laden air ; the rainbow-fed 
chameleon slumbers on the branch ; the en¬ 
amelled beetle on the leaf; the little fish in 
the sparkling depths below ; the radiant king¬ 
fisher, tremulous as sunlight, in mid-air ; and 
the peacock, with furled glories, on the temple 
tower of the silent gods. Amid this easeful and 
luscious splendour the villager labours and starves. 

Reams of hiccoughing platitudes lodged in 
the pigeon-holes of the Home Office by all 
the gentlemen clerks and gentlemen farmers 
of the world cannot mend this. While the 
Indian villager has to maintain the glorious 
phantasmagoria of an imperial policy, while 
he has to support legions of scarlet soldiers, 
golden chuprassies, purple politicals, and green 
commissions, he must remain the hunger- 
stricken, over-driven phantom he is. 

While the eagle of Thought rides the tempest in scorn, 

Who cares if the lightning is burning the corn ? 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


131 


If old England is going to maintain her 
throne and her swagger in our vast Orient 
she ought to pay up like a—man, I was going 
to say; for, according to the old Sanscrit 
proverb, “ You can get nothing for nothing, 
and deuced little for a half-penny.” These 
unpaid-for glories bring nothing but shame. 

But even the poor Indian cultivator has 
his joys beneath the clouds of Revenue Boards 
and Famine Commissions. If we look closely 
at his life we may see a soft glory resting upon 
it. I am not Mr. Caird, and I do not intend 
entering into the technical details of agricul¬ 
ture—“ Quid de utilitate loquar stercorandi ? ” 
—but I would say something of that sweetness 
which a close communion with earth and 
heaven must shed upon the silence of lonely 
labour in the fields. God is ever with the 
cultivator in all the manifold sights and sounds 
of this marvellous world of His. In that 
mysterious temple of the Dawn, in which we 
of noisy mess-rooms, heated courts, and dusty 
offices are infrequent worshippers, the peasant 
is a priest. There he offers up his hopes and 

9 * 


132 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


fears for rain and sunshine ; there he listens to 
the anthems of birds we rarely hear, and inter¬ 
prets auguries that for us have little meaning. 

The beast of prey skulking back to his lair, 
the stag quenching his thirst ere retiring to 
the depths of the forest, the wedge of wild 
fowl flying with trumpet notes to some distant 
lake, the vulture hastening in heavy flight to 
the carrion that night has provided, the crane 
flapping to the shallows, and the jackal 
shuffling along to his shelter in the nullah, 
have each and all their portent to the initiated 
eye. Day, with its fierce glories, brings the 
throbbing silence of intense life, and under 
flickering shade, amid the soft pulsations of 
Nature, the cultivator lives his day-dream. 
What there is of squalor, and drudgery, and 
carking care in his life melts into a brief 
oblivion, and he is a man in the presence 
of his God with the holy stillness of Nature 
brooding over him. With lengthening shadows 
comes labour and a re-awaking. The air is 
once more full of all sweet sounds, from the 
fine whistle of the kite, sailing with supreme 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


13d 


dominion through the azure depths of air, to 
the stir and buzzing chatter of little birds and 
crickets among the leaves and grass. The 
egret has resumed his fishing in the tank 
where the rain is stored for the poppy and 
sugar-cane fields, the sand-pipers bustle along 
the margin, or wheel in little silvery clouds 
over the bright waters, the gloomy cormorant 

sits alert on the stump of a dead date-tree, 

the busy black divers hurry in and out of the 
weeds, and ever and anon shoot under the 
water in hot quest of some tiny fish ; the whole 
machinery of life and death is in full play, 
and our villager shouts to his patient oxen 

and lives his life. Then gradual darkness, 
and food with homely joys, a little talk, a 

little tobacco, a few sad songs, and kindly 
sleep. 

The villages are of immemorial antiquity ; 
their names, their traditions, their hereditary 
offices have come down out of the dim past 
through countless generations. History sweeps 
over them with her trampling armies and her 
conquerors, her changing dynasties and her 


134 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


shifting laws—sweeps over them and leaves 
them unchanged. 

The village is self-contained. It is a com¬ 
plete organism, protoplastic it may be, with 
the chlorophyll of age colouring its institu¬ 
tions, but none the less a perfect, living 
entity. It has within itself everything that 
its existence demands, and it has no am¬ 
bition. The torment of frustrated hope and 
of supersession is unknown in the village. We 
who are always striving to roll our prospects 
and our office boxes up the hill to Simla may 
learn a lesson here: 

Sisyphus in vita quoque nobis ante oculos est 
Qui petere a populo fasces saevasque secures 
Imbibit et semper victus tristisque recedit. 

Nam petere imperium quod inanest nec datur umquam, 
Atque in eo semper durum sufferre laborem, 

Hoc est adverso nixantem trudere monte 
Saxum quod tamen e summo jam vertice rusum 
Yolvitur et plani raptim petit aequora campi. 

In this idyllic existence, in which, as I have 
said, there is no ambition, several other ills 
are also wanting. There is, for instance, no 
News in the village. The village is without 
the pale of intelligence. This must indeed 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


135 


be bliss. Just fancy, dear Vanity, a state of 
existence in which there are no politics, no 
discoveries, no travels, no speculations, no 
Garnet Wolseleys, no Gladstones, no Captain 
Careys, no Sarah Bernhardts ! If there be a 
heaven upon earth, it is surely here. Here no 
Press Commissioner sits on the hillside croak¬ 
ing dreary translations from the St. Petersburg 
press ; here no Pioneer sings catches with 
Sir John Strachey in Council. But here the 
lark sings in heaven for evermore, the sweet 
com grows below, and the villager, amid the 
quiet joys with which earth fills her lap, dreams 
his low life. 










No. XY. 


THE OLD COLONEL. 




139 


No. XY. 

THE OLD COLONEL. 


“ Kwaihaipeglaoandjeldikaro .”—Rigmarole Veda . 


The old Indian Colonel ripening for pension 
on the shelf of General Duty is an object at 
once pitiful and ludicrous. His profession 
has ebbed away from him, and he lies a 
melancholy derelict on the shore, with sails 
flapping idly against the mast and meaningless 
pennants streaming in the wind. 

He has forgotten nearly everything he ever 
learnt of military duty, and what he has not 
forgotten has been changed. It is as much 




140 


DAY IN INDIA. 


as he can do to keep up with the most ad¬ 
vanced thoughts of the Horse Guards on 
buttons and gold lace. Yet he is still em¬ 
ployed sometimes to turn out a guard, or to 
swear that “ the Service is going,” &c.; and 
though he has lost his nerve for riding, he 
has still a good seat on a boot-lace com¬ 
mittee. 

He is a very methodical old man. He rises 
at an early hour, strolls down to the Club on 
the Mall—perhaps the Wheler Club, perhaps 
some other—has his tea, newspaper, and 
gossip there ; and then back to his small bun¬ 
galow. After breakfast he arrays himself for 
the day in some nondescript white uniform, 
and with a forage cap stuck gaily on one side 
of his head, a cheroot in his mouth, and a 
large white umbrella in his hand, he again 
sallies forth to the Club. An old horse is led 
behind him. 

Now the serious business of life again 
begins—to get through the day. There are 
six newspapers to read, twelve pegs to drink, 
four-and-twenty Madras cheroots to smoke, 










































































































































































































*.» 










































/ 






























. 





















































ft 



















ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


141 


there is kindly tiffin to linger over, forty winks 
afterwards, a game of billiards, the band on 
the Mall, dinner, and over all, incessant chatter, 
chatter, old scandal, old jokes, and old stories. 
Everyone likes the old Colonel, of course. 
Everyone says, “ Here comes poor old Smith ; 
what an infernal bore he is ! ”—“ Hulloa, 
Colonel, how are you ? glad to see you! what’s 
the news ? how’s exchange ? ” 

The old Colonel is not avaricious, but he 
saves money. He cannot help it. He has 
no tastes and he draws very large pay. His 
mind, therefore, broods over questions relating 
to the investment of money, the depreciation 
of silver, and the saving effected by purchasing 
things at co-operative stores. He never really 
solves any problem suggested by these topics. 
His mind is not prehensile like the tail of the 
Apollo Bundar ; everything eludes its grasp ; 
so its pursuits are interminable. The old 
Colonel’s cerebral caloric burns with a feeble 
flicker, like that of the Madras Secretariats. 
It never consumes a subject. The same 
theme is always fresh fuel. You might say 


142 


ONE DAV IN INDIA. 


the same thing to him every morning at the 
same hour till the crack of doom, and he 
would never recollect that he had heard your 
remark before. This certainly must give a 
freshness to life and render eternity possible. 

The old Colonel is not naturally an indolent 
man, but the prominent fact about him is 
that he has nothing to do. If you gave him a 
sun-dial to take care of, or a rain-gauge to 
watch, or a secret to keep, he would be quite 
delighted. I once asked Smith to keep a 
secret of mine, and the poor old fellow was 
so much afraid of losing it that in a few hours 
he had got everybody in the station helping 
him to keep it. It always surprises me that 

men with so much time on their hands do 

not become Political Agents. 

Sometimes our old Colonel gets into the 

flagitious habit of writing for the newspapers. 
He talks himself into thinking that he possesses 
a grievance, so he puts together a fasciculus 
of lop-sided sentences, gets the ideas set 

straight by the Doctor, the spelling refur¬ 
bished by the Padre, and fires off the product 


ONE DAT IN INDIA. 


148 


to the Pioneer . Then days of feverish 
excitement supervene, hope alternating with 
fear. Will it appear ? Will the Commander- 
in-Chief be offended ? Will the Government 
of India be angry ? What will the Service 
say? 

The old Colonel is always rather suspicious 
of the great cocked-hats at head-quarters. He 
knows that to maintain an air of activity they 
must still be changing something, or abolishing 
something; and he is always afraid that they 
will change, or abolish him. But how could 
they change the old Colonel ? In a regiment 
he would be like Alice in Wonderland; on the 
Staff he would be like old wine in a new bottle. 
They might make him a K.C.B., it is true ; 
but he does not belong to the Simla Band of 
Hope, and stars must not be allowed to shoot 
madly from their sphere. As to abolishing 
the old Colonel, this too presents its difficulties, 
for Sir Norman Henry and all the celebrated 
cocked-hats at home and abroad look upon 
the Indian Staff Corps as Pygmalion looked 
on his Yenus. They dote upon its lifeless 


144 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


charms, and (figuraUvely) love to clasp it in 
their foolish arms. 

It is better to dress him up in an old red 
coat, and strap him on to an old sword with 
a brass scabbard, that he may stand up on 
high ceremonials and drink the health of the 
good Queen for whom he has lived bravely 
through sunshine and stormy weather, in defi¬ 
ance of epidemics, retiring schemes, and the 
Army Medical Department. It is good to 
ask him to place his old knees under your 
hospitable board, and to fill him with whole¬ 
some wine, while he decants the mellow stories 
of an Anglo-India that is speedily dissolving 
from view. 

The old Colonel has no harm in him ; his 
scandal blows upon the grandmothers of 
people that have passed away, and his little 
improprieties are such as might illustrate a 
sermon of the present day. 

But you must never speak to him as if his 
sun were setting. He is as hopeful as a two- 
year-old. Every Gazette thrills him with vague 
expectations and alarms. If he found himself 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


145 


in orders for a Brigade lie would be less sur¬ 
prised than anyone in the Army. He never 
ceases to hope that something may turn up— 
that something tangible may issue from the 
circumambient world of conjecture. But 
nothing will ever turn up for our poor old 
Colonel till his poor old toes turn up to the 
daisies. This change only, which we harshly 
call 1 ‘Death,” will steal over his prospects; 
this new slide only will be slipped into the 
magic lantern of his existence, accompanied by 
funeral drums and slow marching. 

Soon we shall hardly be able to decipher 
his name and age on the crumbling gravestone 
among the weeds of our horrible station 
cemetery—but what matters it ? 

“ For his bones are dust, 

And his sword is rust, 

And his soul is with the saints, we trust.” 


10 


































No. XYI. 


THE CIVIL SURGEON. 





































THE CIVIL SURGEON. 


“Throw physic to the dogs, I’ll none of it.” 


Perhaps you would hardly guess from his 
appearance and ways that he was a surgeon 
and a medicine-man. He certainly does not 
smell of lavender or peppermint, or display 
fine and curious linen, or tread softly like a 
cat. Contrariwise. 

He smells of tobacco, and wears flannel 
underclothing. His step is heavy. He is a 
gross, big, cow-buffalo sort of man, with a 




150 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


tangled growth of beard. His ranting voice 
and loud familiar manner amount to an out¬ 
rage. He laughs like a camel, with deep 
bubbling noises. Thick corduroy breeches and 
gaiters swaddle his shapeless legs, and he rides 
a coarse-bred Waler mare. 

I pray the gods that he may never be re¬ 
quired to operate upon my eyes, or intestines, 
or any other delicate organ—that he may never 
be required to trephine my skull, or remove 
the roof of my mouth. 

Of course he is a very good fellow. He 
walks straight into your drawing-room with a 
pipe in his mouth, bellowing out your name. 
No servant announces his arrival. He tramples 
in and crushes himself into a chair, without re¬ 
moving his hat, or performing any other high 
ceremonial. He has been riding in the sun, 
and is in a state of profuse perspiration; you 
will have to bring him round with the national 
beverage of Anglo-India, a brandy-and-soda. 

Now he will enter upon your case. “ Well, 
you’re looking very blooming; what the devil 
is the matter with you ? Eh ? Eh ? Want 





















































ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


151 


a trip to the hills ? Eh ? Eh ? How is the 
bay pony ? Eh ? Have you seen Smith’s new 
filly ? Eh ? ” 

This is very cheering and reassuring if you 
are a healthy man with some large conspicuous 
disease—a broken rib, cholera, or toothache; 
but if you are a fine, delicately-made man, 
pregnant with poetry as the egg of the night¬ 
ingale is pregnant with music, and throbbing 
with an exquisite nervous sensibility, perhaps 
languishing under some vague and occult disease, 
of which you are only conscious in moments 
of intense introspection, this mode of approach¬ 
ing the diagnosis is apt to give your system 

a shock. 

Otherwise it may be bracing, like the in¬ 

clement north wind. But, speaking for myself, 
it has proved most ruinous and disastrous. 
Since I have known the Doctor my constitu¬ 
tion has broken up. 1 am a wreck. There 

is hardly a single drug in the whole pharma¬ 
copoeia that I can now take with any pleasure, 
and I have entirely lost sight of a most in¬ 

teresting and curious complaint, 


152 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


You see, dear Vanity, that I don’t mince 
matters. I take our Doctor as I find him, 
rough and allopathic; hut I am sure he might 
be improved in course of two or three genera¬ 
tions. We may leave this, however, to Nature 
and the Army Medical Department. Deform is 
not my business. I have no proposals to offer 
that will accelerate the progress of the Doctor 
towards a higher type. 

Happily his surgical and medicinal functions 
claim only a portion of his time. He is in 
charge of the district gaol, a large and comfort¬ 
able retreat for criminals. Here he is admirable. 
To some eight or nine hundred murderers, 
robbers, and inferior delinquents he plays the 
part of maitre d'hotel with infinite success. 
In the whole country side you will not find a 
community so well bathed, dressed, exercised, 
fed, and lodged as that over which the Doctor 
presides. You observe on every face a quiet 
Quakerish air of contentment. Every inmate 
of the gaol seems to think that he has now 
found a haven of rest. 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


153 


If tlie sea-horse on the ocean 
Own no dear domestic cave, 
Yet he slumbers without motion, 
On the still and halcyon wave: 

If on rainy days the loafer 
Gamble when he cannot roam, 
The police will help him so far 
As to find him here a home. 


This is indeed a quiet refuge for world-wearied 
men; a sanctuary undisturbed by the fears of 
the weak or the passions of the strong. All 
reasonable wants are satisfied here; nothing is 
hoped for any more. The poor burglar bur¬ 
dened with unsaleable “grab” and the reproaches 
of a venal world sorrowfully seeks an asylum 
here. He brings nothing in his hand; he seeks 
nothing but rest. He whispers through the 
key-hole — 

“Nil cupientium 
Nudus castra peto.” 

Look at this prisoner slumbering peacefully 
beside his huqqa under the suggestive bottle 
tree (there is something touching in his select¬ 
ing the shade of a bottle tree: Horace clearly 


154 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


had no bottle tree; or he would never have 
lain under a strawberry (and cream) tree). 
You can see that he has been softly nurtured. 
What a sleek, sturdy fellow he is! He is a 

covenanted servant here, having passed an 
examination in gang robbery accompanied by 
violence and prevarication. He cannot be dis¬ 

charged under a long term of years. Un¬ 
covenanted pilferers, in for a week, regard 
him with respect and envy. And certainly his 
lot is enviable: he has no cares, no anxieties. 
Famine and the depreciation of silver are 

nothing to him. Bain or sunshine, he lives 
in plenty. His days are spent in an innocent 
round of duties, relieved by sleep and contem¬ 
plation of to ov. In the long heats of summer 
he whiles away the time with carpet-making; 
between the showers of autumn he digs, like 

our first parents, in the Doctor’s garden; and 
in winter, as there is no billiard-table, he takes 
a turn on the treadmill with his mates. Per¬ 
haps, as he does so, he recites Charles Lamb’s 
Pindaric ode:— 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


155 


“ Great mill! 

That by thy motion proper 

(No thanks to wind or sail, or toiling rill) 

Grinding that stubborn corn, the human will, 

Turn’st out men’s consciences, 

That were begrimed before, as clean and sweet 
As flour from purest wheat, 

Into thy hopper.” 

Yet sometimes a murmur rises like a summer 
zephyr even from the soft lap of luxury and 
ease. Even the hardened criminal, dandled on 
the knee of a patriarchal Government, will some¬ 
times complain and try to give the Doctor 
trouble. But the Doctor has a specific—a brief 
incantation that allays every species of inflam¬ 
matory discontent. 4 ‘Look here, my man! If 
I hear any more of this infernal nonsense, 
IT1 turn you out of the gaol neck and crop.” 
This is a threat that never fails to produce 
the desired effect. To be expelled from gaol 
and driven, like Cain, into the rude and wicked 
world, a wanderer, an outcast—this would in¬ 
deed he a cruel ban. Before such a presenti¬ 
ment the well-ordered mind of the criminal 
recoils with horror. 


156 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


The Civil Surgeon is also a rain doctor, and 
takes charge of the Imperial gauge. If a pint 
more or a pint less than usual falls, he at once 
telegraphs this priceless gossip to the Press 
Commissioner, Oracle Grotto, Delphi, Elysium. 
This is one of our precautions to guard against 
famine. Mr. Caird is the other. 



No. XVII. 


THE SHIKARKY. 






59 


No. XVII. 

THE SHIKARRY. 


I have come out to spend a day in the jungle 
with him, to see him play on his own stage. 
His little flock of white tents have flown many a 
march to meet me, and have now alighted at 
this accessible spot near a poor hamlet on the 
verge of cultivation. I feel that I have only 
to yield myself for a few days to their hospitable 
importunities and they will waft me away to 
profound forest depths, to the awful penetralia 
of the bison and the tiger. Even here every¬ 
thing is strange to me; the common native has 



160 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


become a Bheel, the sparrowliawk an eagle, 
the grass of the field a vast, reedy growth in 
which an elephant becomes a mere field-mouse. 
Out of the leaves come strange bird-notes, a 
strange silence broods over us; it is broken by 
strange rustlings and cries; it closes over us 
again strangely. Nature swoons in its glory of 
sunshine and weird music; it has put forth its 
powers in colossal timber and howling beasts 
of prey; it faints amid little wild flowers, 
fanned by breezes and butterflies. 

My heart beats in strange anapaests. This 
dream-world of leaf and bird stirs the blood 
with a strange enchantment. The Spirit of 
Nature touches us with her caduceus:— 

“ Fair are others, none behold thee ; 

But thy voice sounds low and tender 
Like the fairest, for it folds thee 
From the sight, that liquid splendour ; 

And all feel, yet see thee never, 

As I feel now . . . . ” 


Our tents are played upon by the flickering 
shadows of the vast pipal-tree that rises in 
a laocoon turtuosity of roots out of an old 






































T%o <Shz/cas 



































































ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


161 


well. The spot is cool and pleasant. Bound 
us are picketed elephants, camels, bullocks, 
and horses, all enjoying the shade. Our 
servants are cooking their food on the pre¬ 
cincts ; each is busy in front of his own little 
mud fire-place. On a larger altar greater 
sacrifices are being offered up for our breakfast. 
A crowd of nearly naked Bheels watch the 
rites and snuff the fragrant incense of venison 
from a respectful distance. Their leader, a 
broken-looking old man, with hardly a rag on, 
stands apart exchanging deep confidences with 
my friend the Shikarry. This old Bheel is 
girt about the loins with knives, pouches, 
powder-horns, and ramrods; and he carries on 
his shoulder an aged flintlock. He looks old 
enough to be an English General Officer or a 
Cabinet Minister; and you might assume that 
he was in the last stage of physical and mental 
decay. But you would be quite wrong. This 
old Bheel will sit up all night on the branch 
of a tree among the horned owls; he will see 
the tiger kill the young buffalo tied up as a 
bait beneath; he will see it drink the life- 

11 


16 2 


ONE DAY IN INDI 


blood and tear the haunch; he will watch it 
steal away and hide under the haraunda bush; 
he will sit there till day breaks, when he will 
creep under the thorn jungle, across the stream, 
up the scarp of the ravine, through the long 
grass to the sahib’s camp, and give the word 
that makes the hunter’s heart dance. From 
the camp he will stride from hamlet to hamlet 
till he has raised an army of beaters; and 
he will be back at the camp with his forces 
before the sahib has breakfasted. Through the 
long heats of the day he will be the life and 
soul of the hunt, urging on the beaters with 
voice and example, climbing trees, peeping 
under bushes, carrying orders, giving advice, 
changing the line, until that supreme moment 
when shots are fired, when the rasping growl 
tells that the shots have taken effect, and 
when at length the huge striped cat lies 
stretched out dead. And all this on a handful 
of parched grain ! 

My friend the Shikarry delights to clothe 
himself in the coarse fabrics manufactured in 
gaols, which, when properly patched and deco- 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


163 


rated with pockets, have undoubtedly a certain 
wild-wood appearance. As the hunter does 
not happen to be a Bheel with the privileges 
of nakedness conferred by a brown skin, 

this is perhaps the only practical alterna¬ 
tive. If he went out to shoot in evening 
clothes, a crush hat, and a hansom cab, 

the chances are that he would make an 
example of himself and come to some un¬ 

timely end. What would the Apollo Bundar 
say ? What would the Bengali Baboo say ? 
What would the see-aye-ees say ? Yes, our 

hunter affects coarse and snuffy clothes; they 
carry with them suggestions of hardship and 

roughing it, and his liat is umbrageous and 

old. 

As to the man under the hat, he is an odd 
compound of vanity, sentiment, and generosity. 
He is as affected as a girl. Among other 
traits he affects reticence, and he will not tell 
me what the plans for the day are, or what 

khabbar has been received. Knowing abso¬ 

lutely nothing, he moves about with a solemn 

and important air, and he says to me, “ Don’t 

11 * 


164 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


fret yourself, my dear fellow; you ’ll know all 
about it, time enough. I have made arrange¬ 
ments.” Then he dissembles, and talks of 
irrelevant topics transcendentally. This makes 
me feel such a poor pen-and-ink fellow, such 
a worm, such a political agent! 

With this discordant note still vibrating we 
go in to breakfast; and then, dear Vanity, he 
bucks with a quiet, stubborn determination that 
would fill an American editor or an Under¬ 
secretary of State with despair. He belongs 
to the twelve-foot-tiger school; so, perhaps, he 
can’t help it. 

If the whole truth were told, he is a warm¬ 
hearted, generous, plucky fellow, with bound¬ 
less vanity and a romantic vein of maudlin 
sentiment that seduces him from time to time 
into the gin-and-water corner of an Indian 
newspaper. Under the heading of “ The Forest 
Banger’s Lament,” or “ The Old Shikarry’s 
Tale of Woe,” he hiccoughs his column of 
sickly lines (with St. Vitus’s dance in their 
feet), and then I believe he feels better. I 
have seen him do it; I have caught him in 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


165 


criminal conversation with a pen and a sheet 
of paper; a bottle at hand— 

A quo, ceu fonte perenni, 

Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis. 

In appearance he is a very short man with 
a long black beard, a sunburnt face, and a 
clay pipe. He has shot battalions of tigers 
and speared squadrons of wild pig. He is 
universally loved, universally admired, and uni¬ 
versally laughed at. 

He is generous to a fault. All the young 

fellows for miles round owe him money. He 
would think there was something wrong if they 
did not borrow from him; and yet, somehow, 
I don’t think that he is very well off. 

There is nothing in his bungalow but guns, 

spears, and hunting trophies; he never goes 
home, and I have an idea that there is some 
heavy drain on his purse in the whole country. 
But you should hear him troll a hunting song 
with his grand organ voice, and you would 
fancy him the richest man in the world, his 

note is so high and triumphant! 


166 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


So when in after days we boast 
Of many wild boars slain, 

We ’ll not forget our runs to toast 
Or run them o’er again. 

And when our memory’s mirror true 
Reflects the scenes of yore, 

We ’ll think of him it brings to view, 
Who loved to hunt the boar. 



No. XVIII. 


THE GRASS-WIDOW IN 
NEPIIELOCOCCYGIA. 
























169 


No. XVIII. 

THE GRASS-WIDOW IN 
NEPHELOCOCCYGIA. 


“ Her bosom’s lord sits lightly on his throne ? 


Little Mrs. Lollipop has certainly proved a 
source of disappointment to her lady friends. 
They have watched her for three seasons going 
lightly and merrily through all the gaieties of 
Cloudland; they have listened to the scandal 
of the cuckoos among the pine-trees and rhodo¬ 
dendrons, but they have not caught her trip¬ 
ping. Oh, no, they will never catch her 
tripping. She does not trip for their amuse- 




170 ONE DAY IN INDIA. 

ment: perhaps she trips it when they go on 
the light fantastic toe, but there is no evidence; 
there is only a zephyr of conjecture, only the 
world’s low whisper not yet broken into storm 
—not yet. 

Yes, she is a source of disappointment to 
them. They have noted her points; her beauty 
has burned itself into their jealousy; her merry 
laugh has fanned their scorn; her bountiful 
presence is an affront to them, as is her ripe 
and lissom figure. They pronounce her morally 
unsound; they say her nature has a taint; 
they chill her popularity with silent smiles of 
slow disparagement. But they have no par¬ 
ticulars ; their slander is not concrete. It is 
an amorphous accusation, sweeping and vague, 
spleen-born and proofless. 

She certainly knows how to dress. Her 
weeds sit easily and smoothly on their delight¬ 
ful mould. You might think of her as a 
sweet, warm statue painted in water-colours. 
(Who wouldn’t be her Pygmalion ?) If she 
adds a garment it is an improvement; if she 
removes a garment it is an improvement; if 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


171 


she dresses her hair it is better; if she lets 
it fall in a brown cascade over her white 

shoulders it is still better; when it is yet in 

curl-papers it is charming. If you smudge the 
tip of her nose with a burnt cork the effect 

is irresistible; if you stick a flower in her hair 
it is a fancy dress, a complete costume—she 
becomes Flora, Aurora, anything you like to 
name. Yet I have never clothed her in a 

flower, I have never smudged her nose with 
a burnt cork, I have never uncurled her hair. 
Ali Baba’s character must not go drifting 
dowm the stream of gossip with the Hill 
Captains and the Under-Secretaries. But I 
hope that this does not destroy the argument. 
The argument is that she is quite too delight¬ 
ful, and therefore blown upon by poisonous 
whispers. 

Her bungalow is on Elysium, of course; it 
is a cottage with a verandah, built on a steep 
slope, and buried deep in shrubbery and trees. 
Within all is plain, but exquisitively neat. A 
wood fire is burning gaily, and the kindly tea- 
tray is at hand. It is five o’clock. Clean 


172 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


servants move silently about with hot water, 
cake, &c. The little boy, a hostage from 
papa in the warm plains below, is sitting pen¬ 
sive, after the fashion of Anglo-Indian children, 
in a little chair. His bearer crouches behind 
him. The unspeakable widow, in a tea-gown 
dimly splendid with tropical vegetation in 
neutral tints, holds a piece of chocolate in her 
hand, while she leans back in her fauteuil 
convulsed with laughter. (It is not necessary 
to say that Ali Baba is relating one of his 
improving tales.) How pretty she looks, show¬ 
ing her excellent teeth and suffused with bright 
warm blushes. As I gaze upon her with fond 
amazement, I murmur mechanically :•— 

Mine be a cot beside the hill; 

A tea-pot’s hum shall soothe my ear, 

A widowy girl, that likes me still, 

With many a smile shall linger near. 

I have been asked to write a philosophical 
minute on the mental and moral condition of 
delightful Mrs. Lollipop’s husband who lives 
down in the plains. I have been requested by the 
Press Commissioner to inquire in Government 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


173 


fashion, with pen and ink, as to whether the 
complaisant proprietor of so many charms 
desires to have a recheat winded in his fore¬ 

head, and to hang his bugle in an invisible 
baldrick; whether it is true in his case that 
Love’s ear will hear the lowest cuckoo note, 

and that Love’s perception of gossip is more 
soft and sensible than are the tender horns of 
cockled snails. Towards all these points I have 
directed my researches. I have resolved myself 
into a Special Commission, and I have sat 

upon grass-widowers in camera. If I sit a little 
longer a Report will be hatched, which, of 
course, I shall take to England, and when 
there I shall go to the places of amusement 
with the Famine Commission, and have rather 
a good time of it. Already I can see, with 

that bright internal eye which requires no lime¬ 
light, grim Famine stalking about the Aquarium 
after dinner with a merry jest preeing its 
wings on his lips. 

But what has all this talk of country matters 
to do with little Mrs. Lollipop ? Absolutely 
nothing. She thinks no ill of herself. She 


174 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


is the most charitable woman in the world. 
There is no veil of sin over her eye ; no cloud 
of suspicion darkens her forehead; no con¬ 
cealment feeds upon her damask cheek. Like 
Eve she goes about hand in hand with her 
friends, in native innocence, relying on what 
she has of virtue. Sweet simplicity! sweet 
confidence! My eagle quill shall not flutter 
these doves. 

Have you ever watched her at a big dance ? 
She takes possession of some large warrior 
who has lately arrived from the battle-fields of 
Umballa or Meerut, and she chaperones him 
about the rooms, staying him with flagons and 
prattling low nothings. The weaker vessel 
jibs a little at first; but gradually the spell 
begins to work and the love-light kindles in 
his eye. He dances, he makes a joke, he 
tells a story, he turns round and looks her 
in the face. He is lost. That big centurion 
is a casualty; and no one pities him. “ How 
can he go on like that, odious creature! ” say 
the withered wall-flowers, and the Hill Captains 
fume round, working out formulae to express 


ONE DAY IN INDIA 


175 


his baseness. But he is away on the glorious 
mountains of vanity; the intoxicating atmo¬ 
sphere makes life tingle in his blood; he is 
an a€po/3ar?7s, he no longer treads the earth. 
In a few days Mrs. Lollipop will receive a 
post-card from the Colonel of her centurion’s 
regiment. 

4 * My Dear Mrs. 

Lollipop, die, per omnes 
Te deos oro, Bobinson cur properes amando 
Perdere ? cui 1 apricum 

Oderit campum, patiens pulveris atque solis. 

Yrs. Sincy. 

Horace Fitzdottrel.” 


Ten to one an Archdeacon will be sent for 
to translate this. Ten to one there is a shindy, 
ending in tea and tearful smiles; for she is 
bound to get a blowing up. 

After what I have written I suppose it 
would be superfluous to affirm with oaths my 
irrefragable belief in Mrs. Lollipop’s innocence; 
it would be superfluous to deprecate the many¬ 
winged slanders that wound this milk-white 
hind. If, however, by swearing, any of your 
readers think I can be of service to her cha- 


176 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


racter, I hope they will let me know. I have 
learnt a few oaths lately that I reckon will 
unsphere some of the scandal-mongers of 
Nephelococcygia. I had my ear one morning 
at the key-hole when the Army Commission 
was revising the cursing and swearing code for 
field service.—(Ah! these dear old Generals, 
what depths of simplicity they disclose when 
they get by themselves. I sometimes think that 
if I had my life to live over again I would keep 
a newspaper and become a really great General. 
I know some five or six obscure aboriginal 
tribes that have never yet yielded a single war 
or a single K.C.B.) 

But this is a digression. I was maintaining 
the goodness of Mrs. Lollipop—little Mrs. Lol¬ 
lipop ! sweet little Mrs. Lollipop ! I was going 
to say that she was far too good to be made 
the subject of whisperings and inuendos. Her 
virtue is of such a robust type that even a 
Divorce Court would sink back abashed before it, 
like a guilty thing surprised. Indeed, she often 
reminds me of Csesar’s wife. 

The harpies of scandal protest that she 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


177 


dresses too low; that she exposes too freely the 
well-rounded charms of her black silk stock¬ 
ings ; that she appears at fancy-dress balls 
picturesquely unclothed—in a word, that the 
public see a little too much of little Mrs. 
Lollipop; and that in conversation with men 
she nibbles at the forbidden apples of thought. 
But all this proves her innocence, surely. She 
fears no danger, for she knows no sin. She can¬ 
not understand why she should hide anything 
from an admiring world. Why keep her charms 
concealed from mortal eye, like roses that in 
deserts bloom and die ? She often reminds me 
of Una in Hypocrisy’s cell. 

I heard an old Gorgon ask one of Mrs. 
Lollipop’s clientele the other day whether he 
would like to be Mrs Lollipop’s husband. 
“ No,” he said, “not her husband; I am not 
worthy to be the husband— 

“ But I would be the necklace, 

And all day long to fall and rise 
Upon her balmy bosom 
With her laughter or her sighs ; 

And I would lie so light, so light, 

I scarce should be unclasped at night." 


12 


178 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


That old Gorgon is now going through a 
course of hysterics under medical and clerical 
advice. Her ears are in as bad a case as 
Lady Macbeth's hands. Hymns will not purge 
them. 



No. XIX. 

THE TRAVELLING M.P. 

THE BRITISH LION RAMPANT. 


12 * 




181 


No. XIX. 

THE TRAVELLING M.P. 

THE BRITISH LION RAMPANT. 


There is not a more fearful wild fowl than 
your travelling M.P. This unhappy creature, 
whose mind is a perfect blank regarding Fanj- 
dari and Bandobast , and who cannot distin¬ 
guish the molluscous baboo from the osseous 
pathan, will actually presume to discuss Indian 
subjects with you, unless strict precautions be 
taken. 

When I meet one of these loose M.P.’s 



182 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


ramping about I always cut his claws at once. 

I say, “ Now, Mr. T. G., you must understand 
that according to my standard you are a 
homunculus of the lowest type. There is nothing 
I value a man for that you can do; there is 
nothing I consider worth directing the human 
mind upon that you know. If you ask for 
any information which I may deem it expe¬ 
dient to give to a person in your unfortunate 
position, well and good: but if you venture 
to argue with me, to express any opinion, to 
criticise anything I may be good enough to 
say regarding India, or to quote any passage 
relating to Asia from the works of Burke, 
Cowper, Bright, or Fawcett, I will hand you 
over to Major Henderson for strangulation, I 
will cause your body to be burnt by an Im¬ 
perial Commission of sweepers, and I will 
mention your name in the Pioneer .” 

In dangerous cases, where a note-book is 
carried, your loose M.P. must be made to 
reside within the pale of guarded conversation. 
If you are wise you will speak to him in the 
interrogative mood exclusively; and you will 


ONE DAT IN INDIA. 


183 


treat his answers with contumelious laughter or 
disdainful silence. 

About a week after your M.P. has landed 
in India he will begin his great work on the 
history, literature, philosophy, and social insti¬ 
tutions of the Hindoos. You will see him in 
a railway carriage when stirred by the oTcrrpos 
studying Forbes’s Hindustani Manual. He is 
undoubtedly writing the chapter on the phi¬ 
lology of the Aryan Family. Do you observe 

the fine frenzy that kindles behind his spec¬ 
tacles as he leans back and tries to eject a 
root ? These pangs are worth about half-a- 

crown an hour in the present state of the book 
market. One cannot contemplate them without 

profound emotion. 

The reading world is hunger-bitten about 
Asia, and I often think I shall take three 
months’ leave and run up a precis of Sanskrit 
and Pali literature, just a few folios for the 
learned world. Max Muller begs me to learn 

these languages first; but this would be a toil 
and drudgery, whereas to me the pursuit of 
literary excellence and fame is a mere amuse- 


184 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


ment, like lawn-tennis or rinking. It is the 
fault of the age to make a labour of what is 
meant to he a pastime. 

“ Telle est de nos plaisirs la surface legere ; 

Glissez, mortels, n’appuyez pas.” 

The travelling M.P. will probably come to 
you with a letter of introduction from the last 
station he has visited, and he will immediately 
proceed to make himself quite at home in your 
bungalow with the easy manners of the Briton 
abroad. He will acquaint you with his plans 
and name the places of interest in the neigh¬ 
bourhood which he requires you to show him. 
He will ask you to take him, as a preliminary 
canter, to the gaol and lunatic asylum; and 
he will make many interesting suggestions to 
the civil surgeon as to the management of 
these institutions, comparing them unfavourably 
with those he has visited in other stations. 
He will then inspect the Brigadier-General 
commanding the station, the chaplain, and the 
missionaries. On his return—when he ought 
to be bathing— he will probably write his 
article for the Twentieth Century , entitled “ Is 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


185 


India Worth Keeping ? ” And this ridiculous 
old Shrovetide cock, whose ignorance and in¬ 
formation leave two broad streaks of laughter 
in his wake, is turned loose upon the reading 
public ! Upon my word I believe the reading 
public would do better to go and sit at the 
feet of Baboo Sillabub Thunder Gosht, B.A. 

What is it that these travelling people put 
on paper? Let me put it in the form of a 
conundrum. Q. What is it that the travelling 
M.P. treasures up and the Anglo-Indian hastens 
to throw away ? A . Erroneous, hazy, distorted 
first impressions. 

Before the eyes of the griffin, India steams 
up in poetical mists, illusive, fantastic, subjec¬ 
tive, ideal, picturesque. The adult Qui Hai 
attains to prose, to stern and disappointing 
realities; he removes the gilt from the Empire 
and penetrates to the brown ginger-bread of 
Rajas and Baboos. One of the most serious 
duties attending a residence in India is the 
correcting of those misapprehensions which your 
travelling M.P. sacrifices his bath to hustle 
upon paper. The spectacled people embalmed 


186 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


in secretariats alone among Anglo-Indians con¬ 
tinue to see the gay visions of griffinhood. 
They alone preserve the phantasmagoria of 
bookland and dreamland. As for the rest 
of us:— 

Out of the day and night 
A joy has taken flight: 

Baboos and Bajas and Indian lore 

Moved our faint hearts with grief, but with delight 

No more—oh, never more ! 

It is strange that one who is modest and 
inoffensive in his own country should imme¬ 
diately on leaving it exhibit some of the worst 
features of ’Arryism; hut it seems inevitable. 
I have met in this unhappy land, countrymen 
(who are gentlemen in England, Members of 
Parliament, and Deputy-Lieutenants, and that 
kind of thing) whose conduct and demeanour 
while here I can never recall without tears and 
blushes for our common humanity. My friends 
witnessing this emotion often suppose that I 
am thinking of the Famine Commission. 

As far as I can learn, it is a generally 
received opinion at home that a man who has 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


187 


seen the Taj at Agra, the Qiitb at Delhi, and 
the Duke at Madras, has graduated with honours 
in all questions connected with British interests 
in Asia; and is only unfitted for the office of 
Governor-General of India from knowing too 
much. 





No. XX. 


MEM-SAHIB. 





191 


No. XX. 

MEM-SAHIB. 


“ Her life is lone. He sits apart; 

He loves her yet : she will not weep, 

Tho’ rapt in matters dark and deep 
He seems to slight her simple heart. 

“ For him she plays, to him she sings 
Of early faith and plighted vows ; 

She knows but matters of the house, 

And he, he knows a thousand things.” 

I first met her shepherding her little flock 
across the ocean. She was a beautiful woman, 
in the full sweetness and bloom of life. Her 
talk was of the busy husband she had left, the 
station life, the attached servants, the favourite 



192 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


horse, the garden and the bungalow. Her 
husband would soon follow her, in a year, or 
two years, and they would return together; 
but they would return to a silent home—the 
children would be left behind. She was going 
home to her mother and sisters ; but there had 
been changes in this home. So her thoughts 
were woven of hopes and fears; and, as she 
sat on deck of an evening, with the great heart 
of the moon-lit sea palpitating around us, and 
the homeless night-wind sighing through the 
cordage, she would sing to us one of the plain¬ 
tive ballads of the old country, till we forgot 
to listen to the sobbing and the trampling of 
the engines, and till all sights and sounds 
resolved themselves into a temple of sentiment 
round a charming priestess chanting low 
anthems. She would leave us early to go to 
her babies. She would leave us throbbing 
with mock heroics, undecided whether we 
should cry, or consecrate our lives to some 
high and noble enterprise, or drink one more 
glass of hot whiskey-and-water. She was 
kind, but not sentimental; her sweet, yet 










































































































ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


193 


practical u good-night ” was quite of the work- 
a-day world; we felt that it tended to dispel 
illusions. 

She had three little boys, who were turned 
out three times a-day in the ultimate state of 
good behaviour, tidiness, and cleanliness, and 
who lapsed three times a-day into a state of 
original sin combined with tar and ship’s grease. 
These three little boys pervaded the vessel with 
an innocent smile on their three little faces, 
their mother’s winning smile. Every man on 
the ship was their own familiar friend, bound 
to them by little interchanges of biscuits, con¬ 
fidences, twine, and by that electric smile 
which their mother communicated, and from 
which no one wished to be insulated. Yes, 
they quite pervaded the vessel, these three 
little innocents, flying that bright and friendly 
smile; and there was no description of mischief 
suitable for three very little boys that they 
did not exhaust. The ingenuity they squan¬ 
dered every day in doing a hundred things 
which they ought not to have done was per¬ 
fectly marvellous. Before the voyage was half 

13 


194 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


over we thought there was nothing left for 
them to do; but we were entirely mistaken. 
The daily round, a common cask would furnish 
all they had to ask; to them the meanest 
whistle that blows, or a pocket-knife, could 
give thoughts that too often led to smiles and 
tears. 

Their mother’s thoughts were ever with 
them; but she was like a hen with a brood 
of ducklings. They passed out of her element, 
and only returned as hunger called them. 
When they did return she was all that soap 
and water, loving reproaches, and tender appeals 
could be; and as they were very affectionate 
little boys, they were for the time thoroughly 
cleansed morally and physically, and sealed 
with the absolution of kisses. 

I saw her three years afterwards in England. 
She was living in lodgings near a school 
which her boys attended. She looked care¬ 
worn. Her relations had been kind to her, 
but not warmly affectionate. She had been 
disappointed with the welcome they had given 
her. They seemed changed to her, more 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


195 


formal, narrower, colder. She longed to be 
back in India; to be with her husband once 
more. But he was engrossed with his work. 
He wrote short letters enclosing cheques; but 
he never said that he missed her, that he 
longed to see her again, that she must come 
out to him, or that he must go to her. He 
could not have grown cold too ? No, he was 
busy; he had never been demonstrative in his 
affection; this was his way. And she was 
anxious about the boys. She did not know 
whether they were really getting on, whether 
she was doing the best for them, whether 
their father would be satisfied. She had no 
friends near her, no one to speak to; so she 
brooded over these problems, exaggerated them, 
and fretted. 

The husband was a man who lived in his 
own thoughts, and his thoughts were book 
thoughts. The world of leaf and bird, the 
circumambient firmament of music and light, 
shone in upon him through books. A book 
was the master-key that unlocked all his 
senses, that unfolded the varied landscape, 

13 * 


196 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


animated the hero, painted the flower, swelled 
the orchestra of wind and ocean, peopled the 
plains of India with starvelings and the moun¬ 
tains of Afghanistan with cut-throats. Without 
a book he moved about like a shadow lost in 
some dim dreamland of echoes. 

Everyone knew he was a scholar, and his 
thoughts had once or twice rung out to the 
world clear and loud as a trumpet-note through 
the oracles of the Press. But in society he 
was shy, awkward, and uncouth of speech, 
quite unable to marshal his thoughts, deserted 
by his memory, abashed before his own silences, 
and startled by his own words. Any fool who 
could talk about the legs of a horse or the 
height of a thermometer was Prospero to this 
social Caliban. 

He felt that before the fine instincts of 
women his infirmity was especially conspicuous, 
and he drifted into misogyny, through bashful- 
ness and pride; and yet misogyny was incom¬ 
patible with his scheme of life and his ambition. 
He felt himself to be worthy of the full 
diapason of home life; he desired to be as 


ONE DAY iN INDIA. 


197 


other men were, besides being something 
more— 


KaKOV yvvai)(€s aAA’ o/xtos, w Srj/xoTai, 

OvK i(TTLy OlK€iV OIKLOLV OLV€V KaKOV. 

Kat yap to yrjpaL, Kai to p.yj yrjpac KaKW. 


So lie married her who loved him for choosing 
her, and who reverenced him for his mysterious 
treasures of thought. 

There was much in his life that she could 
never share; but he longed for companionship 
in thought, and for the first year of their 
married life he tried to introduce her to his 
world. He led her slowly up to the quiet 
hill-tops of thought where the air is still and 
clear, and he gave her to drink of the magic 
fountains of music. Their hearts beat one de¬ 
licious measure. Her gentle nature was plastic 
under the poet’s touch, wrought in an instant 
to perfect harmony with love, or tears, or 
laughter. To read aloud to her in the evening 
after the day’s work was over, and to see her 
stirred by every breath of the thought-storm, 
was to enjoy an exquisite interpretation of the 


198 


0>7E DAY IN INDIA. 


poet’s motive, like an impression bold and 
sharp from the matrix of the poet’s mind. 
This was to hear the song of the poet and 
Nature’s low echo. How tranquillising it was! 
How it effaced the petty vexations of the day! 
—“ softening and concealing; and busy with a 
hand of healing.” 

Tale tuum carme; nobis, divine poeta, 

Quale soper fessis n gramme, quale per aestum 
Dulcis aquae saliente sitim restinguere rivo. 


But with the advent of babies and after long 
separations poetry declined, and the sympathetic 
wife became more and more motherly. The 
father retired sadly into the cloudland of books. 
He will not emerge again. Husband and wife 
will stand upon the clear hill-tops together no 
more. 

Neither quite knows what has happened; 
they both feel changed with an undefined 
sorrow, with a regret that pride will not 
enunciate. She is now again in India with 
her husband. There are duties, courtesies, nay, 
kindnesses which both will perform, but the 


OftE DAY IN INDtA. 


199 

ghost of love and sympathy will only rise in 
their hearts to gibber in mockery words and 
phrases that have lost their meaning, that have 
lost their enchantment. 

“ 0 Love ! who bewailest 

The frailty of all things here, 

Why choose you the frailest 

For your cradle, your home, and your bier ? 

“ Its passions will rock thee 

As the storms rock the raven on high ; 

Bright reason will mock thee 
Like the sun from a wintry sky. 

“ From thy nest every rafter 

Will rot, and thine eagle home 
Leave thee naked to laughter 

When leaves fall and cold winds come.” 





No. XXL 


A LI BABA ALONE; 


THE LAST LAY. 







203 


No. XXI. 

ALI BABA ALONE; 

THE LAST DAY. 


“ Now the last of many days, 

All beautiful and bright as thou, 

The loveliest and the last is dead. 

Rise, memory, and write its praise.” 

How shall I lay this spectre of my own iden¬ 
tity ? Shall I leave it to melt away gracefully 
in the light of setting suns ? It would never 
do to put it out like a farthing rushlight after 
it had haunted the Great Ornamental in an 
aurora of smiles. Is Ali Baba to cease upon 
the midnight without pain ? or is he to lie 
down like a tired child and weep out the 



204 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


spark ? or should he just flit to Elysium ? 
There, seated on Elysian lawns, browsed by 
none but Dian’s (no allusion to little Mrs. 
Lollipop) fawns, amid the noise of fountains 
wonderous and the parle of voices thunderous, 
some wag might scribble on his door, “ Here 
lies Ali Baba,” as if glancing at his truthful¬ 
ness. How is he to pass effectively into the 
golden silences ? How is he to relapse into 
the still-world of observation ? Would four 
thousand five hundred a month and Simla do 
it, wfith nothing to do and allowances, and a 
seat beside those littered under the swart Dog- 
Star of India ? Or is it to be the mandra- 
gora of pension, that he may sleep out the 
great gap of ennui between this life and some¬ 
thing better ? How lonely the Government of 
India would feel! How the world would forget 
the Government of India! Voices would ask :— 

“Do ye sit there still in slumber 
In gigantic Alpine rows ? 

The black poppies out of number 
Nodding, dripping from your brows 
To the red lees of your wine— 

And so kept alive and fine,” 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


205 


Sometimes I think that Ali Baba should he 
satisfied with the oblivion-mantle of knighthood 
and relapse into dingy respectability in the 
Avilion of Brompton or Bath; but since he 
has taken to wearing stars the accompanying 
itch for blood and fame has come :— 

How doth the greedy K.C.B. 

Delight to brag and fight, 

And gather medals all the day 
And wear them all the night. 

The fear of being out-medalled and out-starred 
stings him. 

Thus the desire to go hustling up the hill 
to the Temple of Fame with the other starry 
hosts impels him forward. If you mix yourself 
up with K.C.B.'s and raise your platform of 
ambition, you are just where you were at the 
A B C of your career. Living on a table¬ 
land, you experience no sensation of height. 
For the intoxicating delight of elevation you 
require a solitary pinnacle, some lonely emi¬ 
nence, Aut Caesar, aut nullus; whether in the 
zenith or the nadir of the world’s favour. 

But how much more comfortable in the cold 


206 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


season than the chill splendours of the pinnacles 
of fame, where “ pale suns unfelt at distance 
roll away,” is a comfortable bungalow on the 
plains, with a little mulled claret after dinner. 
Here I think Ali Baba will be found, hidden 
from his creditors, the reading world, in the 
warm light of thought, singing songs unbidden 
till a few select cronies are wrought to sym¬ 
pathy with hopes and fears they heeded not— 
before the mulled claret. 

To this symposium the A.-D.-C.-in-Waiting 
has invited himself on behalf of the Empire. 
He will sing the Imperial Anthem composed 
by Mr. Eastwick, and it will be translated into 
archaic Persian by an imperial Munshi for the 
benefit of the Man in Buckram, who will be 
present. The Man in Buckram, who is suffer¬ 
ing from a cold in his heart, will be wrapped 
up in himself and a cocked hat. The Press 
Commissioner has also asked for an invitation. 
He will deliver a sentiment:—“ Quid sit futu- 
ram eras fuge quserere.” A Commander-in - 
Cliief will tell the old story about the Service 
going to the dogs ; after which there will be 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


207 


an interval of ten minutes allowed for swearing 
and hiccuping. The Travelling M.P. will take 
the opportunity to jot down a few hasty notes 
on Aryan characteristics for the Twentieth Cen¬ 
tury before being placed under the table. The 
Baboo will subsequently be told off to sit on 
the Member’s head. During this function the 

Baboo will deliver some sesquipedalian reflec¬ 
tions in the rodomontade mood. The Shikarry 
will then dawdle over a twelve-foot-tiger story, 
while Mrs. Lollipop tells a fib and makes 

tea; and Ali Baba (unless his heart be too 
full of mulled claret) will make a joke. The 

company will break up at this point, after 

receiving a plenary dispensation from the Arch¬ 
deacon. 

Under such influences Ali Baba may become 
serious; he may learn from the wisdom of age 
and be cheered by the sallies of youth. But 
little Mrs. Lollipop can hardly he called one 
of the Sallies of his youth. Sally Lollipop 
rose upon the horizon of his middle age. She 
boiled up, pure blanc-mange and roses, over 
the dark brim of life’s afternoon, a blushing 


203 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


sunrise, though late in dawning, and most 
cheerful. Sometimes after spending an after¬ 
noon with her, Ali Baba feels so cheered that 
the Government of India seems quite innocent 
and bright, like an old ballerina seen through 
the mists of champagne and lime-light. He 
walks down the Mall smiling upon foolish 
Under-Secretaries and fat Baboos. The people 
whisper as he passes, 4 4 There goes Ali Baba ” ; 
and echo answers 44 Who is Ali Baba ? ” Then 
a little wind of conjecture breathes through the 
pine-trees and names are heard. 

It is better not to call Ali Baba names. 
Nothing is so misleading as a vulgar nomen¬ 
clature. I once knew a man who was called 
44 Counsellor of the Empress,” when he ought 
to have had his photograph exposed in the 
London shop-windows like King Cetewayo, 
K.C.M.G. I have heard an eminent Frontier 
General called 44 Judas Iscariot,” and I myself 
was once pointed out as a 44 Famine Commis¬ 
sioner,” and afterwards as an expurgated edition 
of the Secretary to the Punjab Government. 
People seemed to think that Ali Baba would 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


209 


smell sweeter under some other name. This 
was a mistake. 

Almost everything you are told in Simla is 
a mistake. You should never believe anything 
you hear till it is contradicted by the Pioneer . 
I suppose the Government of India is the 
greatest gobemouche in the world. I suppose 
there never was an administration of equal im¬ 
portance which received so much information 
and which was so ill-informed. At a bureau¬ 
cratic Simla dinner-party the abysses of ignorance 
that yawn below the company on every Indian 
topic are quite appalling ! 

I once heard Mr. Stokes say that he had 
never heard of my book on the Permanent 
Settlement; and yet Mr. Stokes is a decidedly 
intelligent man, with some knowledge of Cymric 
and law. I daresay now that if you were to 
draw off and decant the law on his brain, it 
would amount to a full dose for an adult; 
yet he never heard of my book on the Per¬ 
manent Settlement. He knew about Black- 
stone ; he had seen an old copy once in a 
second-hand book shop; but he had never 

14 


210 


ONE DAY IN INDIA. 


heard of my work! How loosely the world 
floats around us ! I question its objective 
reality. I doubt whether anything has more 
objectivity in it than Ali Baba himself. He 
was certainly flogged at school. Yet when we 

now try to put our finger on Ali Baba he 

eludes the touch; when we try to lay him he 
starts up gibbering at Cabul, Lahore, or else¬ 
where. Perhaps]* it would be easier to imprison 
him in morocco boards and allow him to be 

blown with restless violence round about the 
pendant world, abandoned to critics: whom 
our lawless and uncertain thoughts imagine 

howling. 


London: Printed by W. H. Allen & Co., 13, Waterloo Place. S.W 




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Descriptive, with Anecdotes of Court Life and Wild 
Sports of the country in the Time of Maharaja Jang 
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Drawings. By the late Henry Ambrose Oldfield, M.D., 
many years Residency Surgeon at Khatmandu, Nipal. 
2 vols. 8vo., 36s. 

“The -work is full of facts, intelligently observed and faithfully 
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“ We have nothing but unqualified praise for the manner in -which 
Dr. Oldfield’s manuscript has been edited and published by his 
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amongst the standard works on the Kingdoms of High Asia.”— 
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RECORDS OF SPORT AND MILITARY LIFE 

IN WESTERN INDIA. By the late Lieutenant-Colonel 
G. T. Fraser, formerly of the 1st Bombay Fusiliers, and 
more recently attached to the Staff of H.M.’s Indian Army. 
With an Introduction by Colonel G. B. Malleson, C.S.I. 
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THIRTEEN YEARS AMONG THE WILD 
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From Personal Observation ; with an account of the Modes 
of Capturing and Taming Wild Elephants. By G. P. 
Sanderson, Officer in Charge of the Government Elephant 
Keddahs at Mysore. With 21 full-page Illustrations and 
Three Maps. Second Edition. Fcp. 4to. £1 5s. 




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Travel in Senegambia, with Observations on Native 
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With Sixteen full-page Illustrations and Map. 8vo., 18s. 

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Whalley Nicholson. Crown 8vo. With photographs. 
12s. Qd. 

THE RUSSIANS AT HOME AND THE 

RUSSIANS ABROAD. Sketches, Unpolitical and Political, 
of Russian Life under Alexander II. By H. Suther¬ 
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FINAL FRENCH STRUGGLES IN INDIA AND 

ON THE INDIAN SEAS. Including an Account of the 
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